There are three excellent must-reads related to GamerGate this last week, plus one oldie but goodie. All of them look at gamergate skeptically, not from a position of extremism or reactionary politics, but from a sense of moderation. I’ll recommend them, and then write my own thoughts before I take a bit of a self-imposed exile from the blog for a few days. Seriously, read them.
I keep getting hit with people going ,’Well Jaffe, these journalists are SMEARING devs by saying bad shit about them!!!!’…ok, well welcome to the big leagues of putting something out in the world for public consumption and getting judged for it.
Their ideology—the conviction that any and all feminism, and anything that can be deemed “SJW” is inherently corrupt—makes harassment and the targeting of outspoken figures, especially women, inevitable, and impervious to utilitarian admonitions. Why care about ‘looking bad’ when your cause is so noble?
John Walker, an editor of Rock, Paper, Scissors, wrote the following on his personal blog.
“Anti-GamerGate” does not exist. There is no such movement, there is no such collective of people. It’s a construct of GG’s, an attempt to create a scarecrow. There are, undoubtedly, stupid, dangerous idiots who are responding to those within GG in awful ways. They are not an organised affiliation, with dedicated forums, coordinated attack mobs, and specifically expressed desires to “destroy”.
David A Hill, dev and former journalist, has a month-old article that bears re-reading.
So, corruption in journalism. Can I let you in on a secret? We want to have that conversation. We all do, with maybe a couple of exceptions. This is a conversation we’ve tried to have, and wanted to have for years.
But why aren’t we just sitting down and talking it over and smiling and playing games and shutting up about the feminisms? Basically, it’s because we’re having two completely different conversations. One’s an insider conversation, informed about the industry. The other is an outsider conversation, based on half-truths, misunderstandings, and what we see as skewed priorities.
My turn, and I’ll just write briefly and plainly.
1. I think that GamerGate-the-Hashtag will always struggle with the issue of harassment to casual observers.
#GamerGate was forged in reaction to the refusal for reporters to delve into the muck that was Zoe Quinn’s lovelife, and the associated hammering that she was taking from Mundane Matt (“5 Guys”) and 4Chan. At the same time, Anita Sarkeesian posted the same time, and was immediately driven into hiding by a virulent hate campaign. Gamergaters have attempted to disown the hate from this period of time in their past. But it always seems disingenious – if you try to say that they weren’t party to it or actively cheering it on, you seem inherently dishonest. And that only hurts the cause, no matter how much #gamergate has cleaned up their act (and they’ve certainly put in an effort to do so).
Most #GamerGate diehards have no idea how big, confusing and messy the GamerGate-the-Event is to casual observers on the outside. Most don’t pay close attention to the daily goings-on – hell, *I* can barely keep up with what’s going on, simply between completing my 8-hour job and then writing for the blog. Most only know about the biggest, most explosive things that appeared in Facebook and Twitter in the last week. And since GamerGate is leaderless and has a nasty undercurrent to it, the biggest, most explosive things usually just reinforce the harassment narrative: Brianna Wu got doxed. Anita got a bomb threat at a public event – again. Zoe had a reddit spy show up at her restraining order hearing – and that story has more than 600 upvotes. Every piece of moderate news that comes simply cannot compete with the shittiist things done by the shittiest people who can sneak near the cause.
Some will say, ‘there’s no proof that #Gamergate was behind Anita or Briana!’ This is true. Some will say ‘our side is getting harassed too!’ This is also true. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter – most gamers and devs know that gamergate-the-event is just so toxic that having an opinion on it – one way or the other – can very likely doom you to an inevitable river of shit. There’s a reason every female developer I know refuses to talk about gamergate – what may not be noticed is that fewer devs are opting to talk to fans AT ALL for fear of being dragged into the tarpit of the debate and being forced to choose a side and risk alienating fans. So heads wiser than mine are just opting to stay the hell away from it altogether, rather than support or oppose it directly.
Look at it this way: There is nothing in the whole debate I care about as much as the issue of harassment. If I sign up as a Gamergate supporter, I am instantly associating myself with a movement and a fight that was born of harassment, and always seems to find its way back in the proximity of the gutter. I know that probably only 1% of GamerGaters are the sort of vile people who cannot resist this sort of shit, but the fact that that 1% too often dictates what the fight of the day is for GamerGate, the result is a movement that is incapable of actually moving forward. Until Gamergate changes their culture, I expect little will change.
2. I’m all in favor of better games journalism, but I see little or no actual tangible progress or appetite for change in directions that actually matter.
Look, our press isn’t great. It’s got a lot of problems, but still we have the widest, most diverse, less bought-and-paid press that video games have ever had. To be sure, there have always been problems and questions of corruption. But the corruption centers around money, mainly how publishers can buy access via the games press and streamers, and there seems to be shockingly little interest by anyone in covering that stuff.
Instead, I see a mindnumbing focus on bullshit I can’t get behind. People are still butthurt by an editorial in Gamasutra that happened 6 weeks ago. This — has nothing to do with ethics. People are upset to find that Game Journalists have a mailing list – so far the list has shown… erm, some journalists disagreeing with each other and being a little catty towards some devs. Big whoop. Most industries have a mailing list. On dev lists, we complain about reporters! People are upset to find out that Games Journalists have FRIENDS! Or sometimes have drinks with developers! Ye gads. That’s called “Connections”, otherwise known as “How you get information for your fucking news story.”
And then there’s the collusion angle. Apparently, Ben Kuchera worked together to release 12 articles at the same time in order to…. do …. what? Seriously, what’s the motive here? That they’d launch a nagging mommy bomb so massive that they’d convince all gamers that they had wasted their lives, so we’d all stop playing our video games and Ben could be looking for a new job before Christmas as the games industry as we know it lay in smoldering ruins behind him? Seriously. There is no motive here for any sort of nefarious conspiracy here that makes sense. The short answer is simple: journalists were fucking lazy, and stole from each other when trying to rush out stories condemning what was happening to Zoe and Anita.
Here’s the secret about the press: Collusion, I.e. having the same story as the other guys, is actually pretty bad for them. If everyone has the same story, then there’s no reason to read them all. People will only read the biggest and best one. In order to compete, you have to FIND a reason, a spin, or an angle for people to choose your site over the others. Polygon does it by asking interesting cultural questions about the games it plays. The Escapist does it, apparently, by pandering to Gamergate. That’s FINE. If you don’t have a good spin, angle or beat, then there’s no reason why someone would choose your site over IGN or Gamespot.
3. As a game developer and first amendment purist, I find the drive to silence certain types of game criticism revolting.
I concede that the anti-feminist and anti-SJW angle of the debate is a relatively minor complaint for some gamergaters to have, but for many, that’s what they mean when they talk about corruption. In my interview with Milo, he dinged the idea of GAMR as something that couldn’t handle the anti-feminist cultural issues he cares about. This idea that SJWs are going to use DARPA and DiGRA to somehow make us stop making the kind of games that gamers today love. It’s ridiculous.
First off, AAA studios like money. A lot. And their stockholders like money. A lot. People get fired if we don’t make games that deliver wheelbarrels full of money. And it turns out that games with lots of sex and violence still deliver money. A metric fuckton of it. Look at the success of Grand Theft Auto V. The noted SJW-corrupt press gave it a 97%. That studio is going to be pretty damned cautious about fucking up that money printing machine. If some SJW tried to come in and mess with GTA VI, they’d probably be taken out mob style.
I’m in no way an SJW, but I have taken the time to watch Anita’s stuff, and found both good and bad stuff in there. Why? Because good designers seek all the input they can. They try to look at their game in every possible light, examine every possible angle, and see if there is some new way, technique or viewpoint that can elevate their craft, and make better games and reach larger audiences. Me and most other designers are more than capable of filtering out the bad or non-useful parts of the feedback. My artistic freedom is fine.
People want to study my games? That’s fine. People want to tell me I’m doing it wrong? Dear god, that’s a normal day of work for a game designer. As long as no one is advocating for legal or political censorship of games – let them talk. It’s not going to hurt your games, and I’d rather live in an industry where free speech is encouraged, rather than slam down on one viewpoint via some sort of neoMcCarthyism.
4. I’m skeptical of how big GamerGate actually is.
As I mentioned yesterday, the big gaming press outlets are utterly ignoring #GamerGate. They’ve completely written that audience off. It’s hard to tell what, exactly, they’re seeing, but they must have some metrics, somewhere, that says that things are moving up for them, and that they should just keep on keeping on.
This probably shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, it’s not Polygon’s readers that was mad at Polygon. It was Reddit and 4Chan, who normally get their news from… well, whatever Reddit and 4Chan have upvoted and/or talked about. Polygon’s daily readers probably have only the dimmest idea of what’s going on.
5. I really want GamerGate to become effective, or go away.
I have a selfish reason for suggesting a consumer organization and then attempting to refine that idea – right now, the games industry is a sucky place to be around. Developers don’t want to engage with their fans right now, for fear of being pulled into the tarpit of #gamergate related issues. This sucks. It sucks for us, and it sucks for you.
Right now, #gamergate is like a dull toothache. It’s constantly there, nagging at you, but nothing much that’s momentous actually happens. I want to change that. I think a consumer organization like GAMR could solve the problems above. It could provide resources to help combat harassment. It could focus the issues of press corruption on actual press corruption. It could help casual #gamergate fans get a filtered understanding of what is actually important to the cause. And it could focus its relatively small numbers into forming a more powerful, unified thrust. One big enough, united enough, and powerful enough that the major game sites can’t ignore it anymore.
So I put the idea out there. I still have no interest in running it, but I think it could be pretty cool, and has the potential to raise the visibility of the cause, and could address not only some press shady practices, but also some developer/publisher shady practices as well. Which, I stress, I think is a good thing, because we’re certainly not above reproach either.
Maybe that’s not the answer. But I can tell you that the answer isn’t just letting this dull toothache keep going the way it’s going now. It’s just an endless game of chicken right now, between the press and a relatively tiny sliver of the games playerbase. Until some fundamentals happen, it looks almost guarunteed that nothing substantial is going to change in the near future.
Which is a shame, because I’d really like to talk about something other than gamergate.
Another great one, Damion! Thanks for this. There is a very present fear (to me at least) that if people like you didn’t take the time to keep tabs on this whole ordeal and document its history then people would forget what this is all about and take bullshit for granted. So for that, thanks a bunch.
“I know that probably only 1% of GamerGaters are the sort of vile people who cannot resist this sort of shit”
I disagree and here’s why. What is the endgame of Gamergate? To rid the gaming journalism world of “SJW”s. Either pick writers off one by one or bankrupt the companies. This isn’t even a secret as they openly talk about it on twitter. This is done under the guise of “removing ideology from games” but apparently right wing libertarians, minarchists, anti-feminists, neoreactionaries etc are welcome.
For this, they constantly badger the “SJW”s in question asking loaded or long refuted questions, requesting them to clarify conspiracy theories. They run ad-removal campaigns and blacklist journalists and developers alike. This is a much bigger problem than “threats” and “harassment”(I think it’s a sort of harassment. And it’s much much more rampant as well.
“I’m in no way an SJW,”
Well, that’s disappointing. Both the fact that you think “an SJW” is correct grammar and that you aren’t one.
If I had to wager a guess, I’d say that 20% of ggers are really into the SJW angle. Most of the rest think it’s about ‘corruption’ and ‘collusion’ but seem uneager to explore what is meant by that. I do think that that 20% won’t be happy until Ben Kuchera and Leigh Alexander are fired. Which is pretty funny coming from the crowd who gets outraged when being a dickhead online can get THEM fired.
I don’t consider myself an SJW in classic tumblr terms – I.e. The far extremes of feminism. I consider myself a feminist, but I’ve frequently clashed with feminists, both here and elsewhere. I disagree with plenty that Anita says, but I’ll defend to the death her right to say it. I strongly defended Penny Arcade during the dickwolves incident but I have no qualms with people who disagree being able to voice their displeasure at me or them. I’m pretty okay having no banner to rally behind. But in this case, I feel they are being very wrongly vilified to the degree I must speak
I just want to note that 20% is a PRETTY HIGH number.
Just imagine that for each 10 persons you meet, 2 are trying to destroy your career or worse, and you can see how bad that number is.
If you are a feminist and met 100 “GGers” in a event, 20 would be people who really hate your guts and are willing to stage boycotts or worse against you.
20% of a mass movement(as they claim) would be a REALLY HIGH number of people trying to “erase” you (a feminist).
In fact, when dealings with hundreds, 2% would already be waaay too high, with thousands, 0.2% would be too high, and so on…
BTW, this illustrates how much BS female geeks get thrown their way.
Imagine a Con with 10000 attendants, let’s say 2%(being very conservative) dislike female “invading” their hobby(200 “extremists”), of those some 2% get “brave” and decide to act and give some shit to a female dev (4 assholes).
That’s more or less what we hear after most major geek events, some half-dozen woman coming out and telling stories of harassment.
Mm hmm. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/10/12/nycc-harassment-is-a-public-health-issue/
I haven’t burrowed into the GG hive deep enough to be able to guess at any numbers, but I’ve observed a non-insignificant number of people trumpeting the ideology that shadow_nirvana points out. They may be a niche in the larger gamergate movement, but they’re significant enough that their rhetoric can be consistently seen in the highest-voted comments whenever something dismissive of the “SJW press” (read: pro-feminism) is posted to reddit. Hell, even that mind-numbing Christina Hoff Summers video had thousands of upvotes on /r/videos.
The truly toxic thing, I think, is the attitude that people asserting these values are “unbiased” or “apolitical.” According to them, feminist voices in the press are just ideologues pushing an agenda (I’ve seen multiple people saying this verbatim), but anything that maintains the status quo is completely neutral. As though reinforcing the current system as the norm isn’t its own form of politics. I’ve even seen this sentiment feed into the ethics angle, with people calling for “objective coverage” of games that doesn’t include any “biased” information, such as treatment of women or minorities… or boob plate for that matter.
I really wonder how many people in the GG movement simply fail to grasp this and take people calling them “reactionary” and “conservative” as epithets and nothing more. I think the sad part is that many people are simply unable to grapple with their own world view and how it may be reinforcing a system in which the harassment we’ve seen is considered normal or expected in any way (or in which victim blaming is seen as the default response… seriously fuck MundaneMatt and his ilk).
I think this is in part deliberate; this particular breed of GGer wants to believe that a world that caters to the preferences of straight white men is their birthright. And it’s no accident that the cause has been taken up, in some cases, by the ideological right — the champion of straight, white, male persons.
At its core, GG is a radical conservative movement — it wants to dramatically change what it sees as the current culture to replace it with something that hearkens to a perceived culture of the past.
A/an articles are based on how the object sounds out loud. “SJW” is read “ess jay dubya”. “ess” has a vowel sound to start with. Therefore, you use “an”.
It’s less removing SJWs from gaming “journalism” and more removing their influence on gaming “journalists.” Journalists aren’t supposed to let their political positions influence their writings, period. Constantly holding up frauds and hypocrites like Quinn and Sarkeesian because they agree with the sophomoric things they say, then berating gamers because they reject such things, is the problem.
“Journalists aren’t supposed to let their political positions influence their writings, period.”
“Man is by nature a political animal” — Aristotle.
You can’t remove a journalists’ politics from his writing unless you’re writing about the utterly apolitical. When I talk about the mechanics of a CPU’s L2 cache, for example, that’s a pretty cut-and-dried discussion. When discussing the politics of BioShock Infinite, yes, my own political views shape how I see the world of the game. That’s partly because of an appreciation for the BI team wove real-world history into the fictional world of Columbia (America, for example, had its own version of Comstock — he wrote the Comstock Acts after the Civil War). But the world of BioShock contained a great deal of commentary on politics and political systems.
You cannot separate art or comic books or gaming from the culture in which they were created — which means political interpretations are always going to be woven into any appreciation of a piece.
This is absurd. Have you heard of ‘fox news’? Or ‘daily kos’?
Journalists are completely allowed to have a beat or a slant. The slant is not usually hard to see: no one, including Fox viewers, believe that they are being centrists when they report the news. They need to be honest and transparent and not play loose with the facts, but they certainly are allowed to focus their efforts in a particular direction, and elevate speakers and heroes whose philosophy aligns with their own.
You always have the freedom to go read other journalists.
How exactly does a random gamer “blacklist” a writer? (Answer: they don’t)
Gamers don’t have the power to blacklist writers, they have the power to not read their work, which is certainly within their rights.
If you are an SJW writing laughably bad crap that’s fine but you aren’t entitled to readers. You don’t buy a game because the female character’s boobs are too big, they don’t read your writing because you’re a moral scold concerned about boob size.
Working as intended.
I should add that as a developer if someone “blacklists” me – and by that I mean doesn’t buy my game – for any reason I’m fine with that. I try to make a good game people will like and they get to choose whether or not to buy it.
If they don’t buy it and tell their friends to not buy it then good for them. Hopefully it’s not for infantile reasons, but even if it is – oh well. Developers aren’t entitled to consumer dollars.
I’ve seen examples of “SJW” game developers pledge never to hire someone after that person expressed milquetoast opinions they didn’t approve of, so “SJWs” complaining about blacklisting by consumers (if consumers not buying your work counts as “blacklisting” at all…) is a little hard to take seriously.
Most of the time I’ve seen people threaten other people that they are saying something job-threatening, it’s not for milquetoast opinions, but actually for saying something either extremely douchebaggish, or something completely detached from reality.
A lot of people like to point out that Leigh Alexander told a kid he was treading on thin ice, but IIRC, that kid was a kid who hoped to get a job in the industry and was saying stuff like ‘sexism in the industry doesn’t exist’ – which is patently and obviously wrong – and then mocking people who tried to point out the obvious.
No one wants to hire an asshole to join a diverse team on an incredibly high pressure job like games dev. It doesn’t matter if that asshole is an asshole because he hates women or is an asshole because she constantly is telling you how terrible a human being you are for liking Bayonetta. I’ve seen plenty of people on both sides make comments that would make me throw their resume in the trash if I was smart enough to trawl through their twitter history.
“There’s no sexism in the games industry” is a very milquetoast opinion, especially coming from a random 20-year-old who doesn’t work in games and is naive. Equating that comment to “hating women” is absurd.
If people freak out over that I question how they can function in everyday life and diverse work environments. Do they throw hissy fits when their workplace hires a Republican?
I’ve worked with Democrats, Republican, Liberatarians, ultra-liberals, vegans, gun nuts – who cares? If they’re harassing someone at work that’s not acceptable. If they have opinions I don’t agree with that’s my problem, not theirs. If you’re for a truly “diverse” environment that necessarily means diversity of opinion.
You don’t have to “freak out” about statements like that to conclude that you wouldn’t want to work in a room with someone who would dismiss a subject like female harassment as unimportant.
You can think what you want, but don’t dismiss a legitimate point of view as unimportant, if it’s made with conviction or held by someone with a stake in the position.
I probably believed stupider things when I was 20 years old, oh so long ago.
Of course, the problem isn’t holding an ignorant opinion about something you know nothing about (don’t we all?), but A) failing to realize how little you actually know and B) disrespecting the experience of people who do actually know.
Neither of those are desirable character traits for any position of employment, except perhaps some flavor of political commentator.
“Diversity of opinion” isn’t always desirable. Would you ‘discriminate’ against a doctor who thinks vaccines cause autism? I definitely would.
And if you don’t share the goals of an organization–and diversity is a legitimate goal for any corporate environment–then it’s not necessarily wrong for the organization to find someone else to work with them.
“Neither of those are desirable character traits for any position of employment”
If you refuse to hire someone because they stubbornly hold on to an ignorant opinion who exactly are you hiring? There are about 3 people on earth who aren’t guilty of that.
You’re making excuses for juvenile threats. Listen and believe.
There are about 3 people on earth who aren’t guilty of that.
Some people are worse at it than others. And some of the particular manifestations of their ignorance and disrespect for others are job-relevant.
You’re making excuses for juvenile threats.
Nope. Warning people that ignorant disrespect for other people can hurt your employment prospects is not a juvenile threat, it’s good fucking advice.
Listen and believe.
You are mocking real problems. Nice.
Ideological purity tests and blacklisting are a real problem.
It’s just a problem you don’t care about since in this case it’s your team doing it.
This particular subthread began with someone bemoaning fake “blacklisting.” Then I bring up an example of real blacklisting and suddenly it doesn’t matter any more – now blacklisting is good because the nasty people being blacklisted deserve it, because reasons!
It’s hard to take people seriously when they have no consistent principles.
“I’m against blacklisting except when it happens to people I don’t like.”
Wow – what an incredible moral stand!
“It’s just a problem you don’t care about since in this case it’s your team doing it.”
That’s nothing but projection on your part. As you’ve proven in many threads.
If an employer refuses to hire someone who says “sexism in the industry doesn’t exist”, an then mocks other people for it, that’s not a matter of “ideology”, because A) it’s simply factually false that sexism in the industry doesn’t exist (milquetoast, my ass) and B) they demonstrated a problem respecting people with experiences different than their own.
It’s not unreasonable discrimination to refuse to hire someone who said something stupid and acted like an asshole.
It is not at all comparable to GG boycotting not just entire web sites that publish an article criticizing aspects of the gamer identity, but a secondary boycott of any company doing business with that website. In that case, you aren’t just blacklisting a few individuals, but companies associated (by two levels of redirection!) with the offending individuals.
How could it possibly be “projection” when your views are completely at odds with mine? (I don’t think you know what “projection” is)
I’m against blacklisting across the board. It doesn’t matter if the person is liberal, conservative, what they said or about who. I’m not for blacklisting of anyone, including people I can’t stand, people I disagree with 100% and people who are morally repugnant to me.
It’s impossible for me to project onto you the view that blacklisting is good or bad based on who is being blacklisted because that’s not a view I hold.
“they demonstrated a problem respecting people with experiences different than their own.”
You’re demonstrating that same problem right now. Does that mean you’re unsuitable for any job?
Of course not, because you’re you and your logic is purely self-serving.
“It’s not unreasonable discrimination to refuse to hire someone who said something stupid and acted like an asshole.”
You’re saying stupid things. But I’d hire you if you were good for the job.
“It is not at all comparable to GG boycotting…”
You’re right, consumers choosing to boycott is not comparable to blacklisting by employers. That is precisely my point.
Employers hold tremendous power over employees and potential employees; consumers do not.
A bunch of employers coming together to pledge never to hire certain people is extremely different from a tiny percentage of consumers refusing to patronize a business.
You’re opposed to something that barely qualifies as blacklisting when the political aims are out of step with yours and an advocate for actual blacklisting when the political aims align with yours.
It’s a dull non-philosophy. “When I do it it’s ok” is not a principle or a statement of ethics, it the philosophy of small children and sociopaths.
It sure seems like you’re working very hard to explain why something isn’t a “blacklist” when it it’s a list of a journalists, their employers, and companies that do business with their employers. Morality is judged by intention, not impact, and the intention of GG boycotts is to get particular individual journalists fired or silenced. So, yes, you are projecting. Every time that you deny GG blacklists, you are providing more evidence that you define blacklisting by the person doing it.
If you expand “blacklisting” to include every time a company publicly states that they won’t hire someone (the infamous blacklists in history were usually secret, btw) the definition loses any moral meaning. I mean, my firewall might “blacklist” some incoming connections, but no one thinks that has any moral implications. If the Republican National Committee refuses to hire someone who’s active in Democratic party circles, no one considers that “blacklisting”.
The distinction is “is it relevant to the job”. And in the case of that 20-year old, the answer is definitely yes! Disrespecting other people in the industry you want to work in is a barrier to employment.
“You’re demonstrating that same problem right now.”
Perhaps, but not as badly as that 20-year-old. And at least the two of us have pseudonyms. I mean, forget the ignorance and disrespect, do you really want to hire fools?
“Zoe had a reddit spy show up at her restraining order hearing”
Not sure why you are including this. The person posting this was a close friend of her ex and not some random stalker.
Because it demonstrates KiAs unending appetite for gossip related to this case. It defeats the entire ‘this is really about journalism’ narrative.
He could have just fed notes to her ex, then, instead of telling the whole world. Also, if Gamergate isn’t really about ZQ, why does anyone care about her being in court asking for a restraint?
Because the fact that a close friend of her ex felt it was a good idea for him to show up there is itself indicative of the kinds of attitudes these people have towards women.
Presumably he wasn’t called to be there by the legal system. He had no standing. He had no reason to attend — *unless* the reason is to further stir the pot / gather evidence / create a culture of intimidation.
If GG isn’t about ZQ and AS’ personal lives, or Brianna Wu’s, than it’s time to remove their personal lives from the equation. I don’t think the movement (to the extent it is a movement) can accomplish that.
The issues “these people” have with these *particular* women are well-known. Zoe Quinn and Sarkeesian are both complete frauds and fake feminists, and gamergate enjoys pointing that out. Since, according to your inferences, women are incapable of defending themselves from the stupid things they say, I can understand how this would rub you the wrong way.
*yawn*
But if GG is not about Zoe and Anita, and it’s about journalistic integrity, why not focus on that instead, despite the enjoyment of talking about Zoe and Anita? Why not focus on payola issues (not just with YouTubers, but with blogs that solicit game devs trying to get their game reviewed for cash in order to get to the front of the line, as happened with a fellow indie dev about two or three years ago)?
Honestly, Zoe and Anita are not the tip of the iceberg. Zoe may or may not be a horrible person- I don’t care, personally, because she can’t affect me. Anita is a critic, and has a right to her opinions- as we all have a right to opinions of her opinions (my opinion is that she brings up some good points, and is way off the mark on others). The fact that her playing of games is questioned as a way to question the legitimacy of her criticism of some obvious aspects of games speaks more to fear of her criticism being taken seriously than actually debating the criticism (which I understand has actually been done without getting personal- so there, case closed, eh?).
Congratulations on pointing out everything that is really wrong with #gamergate – the fact that people like you come along and spout shit like this.
I have been following your blog for the past few weeks. While I respect your efforts to help the “good GGers” find some productive outlet for their anger/energy, I don’t think there is any realistic way for that happen. I say this because my conversations with GGers (I’ve had more than a few) always end up in the cul-de-sac of “these women are overplaying if not outright faking their abuse.” That view, held by “moderate” GGers, is far from moderate. It’s extremely anti-woman, and their tacit acceptance of it gives cover and encouragment to harassers. I believe these are (mostly) impressionable young men seduced by toxic MRA logic, who are not terrible people at heart, but so long they they gather together in the self-reinforcing consciouness bubble of Gamergate, they are lost to real discussion.
Also, I hope Milo’s comments about Brianna on the day after her harassment give you serious pause about lending him any of your credibility.
That said, I respect your efforts and realize they come from a place of decency.
“MRA logic” makes you sound just as crazy as people who blame feminism for everything.
MRAs are an extremely specific type of person, not a catch-all boogeyman.
Right, and if you’re not identifying as an MRA, you may assume discussions about MRAs are not directed at you. Don’t be so SENSITIVE, MANG.
I call it MRA logic because that’s what it is.
It was MRA logic to decide that ZQ’s ex was the REAL victim, and she needed to be “exposed” for whatever the fuck it was that made GGers so upset. (And don’t tell me it was about a review that was never actually written.)
It was MRA logic to LEAP to the conclusion that Anita didn’t call the cops, and was instead manipulating (if not fabricating) the situation to her advantage. In fact, that allegation was presented to you BY an MRA (Davis Aurini). And GGer’s *jumped* on it like a pack of wild dogs on a piece of raw steak. (Don’t tell me otherwise — I’ve been watching the hashtag.)
And now, again, with Brianna — “Oh, she’s using it to her advantage, manipulating all of us…” Adam Baldwin and Milo both said things to that effect. Because women have the REAL power, right? And harassment is just another tool to screw men over.
Milo, Breitbart, and the AEI are all committed to the idea that women are unfairly intruding into domains that traditionally belong to men. Milo OFTEN makes viciously sexualized criticisms of women. And Christine Sommer, the GG “feminist”, wrote a BOOK called “The War Against Boys.” Need I tell you what it’s about?
So yes, that’s MRA logic. You don’t have to recognize it by that name, or even be aware you’re using it. But if you’re part of GG, you’ve probably accepted it as truth.
CHS isn’t an MRA.
You don’t know what the term means. What you’re doing is akin to saying that every anti-GG person is using radical feminist logic. When what you really mean is that they are using logic that some radical feminists also use sometimes.
The use of “MRA” has gotten so lazy and ubiquitous that it’s yet another term that is losing all meaning. “This cookie doesn’t taste good, must be an MRA cookie!”
I’m not an MRA, I don’t like MRAs, but you’re using the wrong term. The GG has very little to do with men’s rights issues and what you call “men’s rights logic” is really just common blame shifting and the reduction of cognitive dissonance.
Many anti-GG people believe that GG people who claim harassment are faking it or that it’s a false flag. Are they also using “MRA logic”? Or is it just that they believe what’s convenient, a tactic that long predates MRAs?
“What you’re doing is akin to saying that every anti-GG person is using radical feminist logic. When what you really mean is that they are using logic that some radical feminists also use sometimes.”
1) P Smith did not say “every” so it wasn’t “akin” to that at all.
2) There is no anti-GG movement, there are only lots of people who don’t like GG.
3) There isn’t really anything about the opposition to GG that relates to what distinguishes radfems from regular fems (stuff like anti-PIV, TERFs). Talking about “radical feminists” in this context is just a way to call any feminist to the left of CHS a radical.
4) To say “X is using Y logic” simply means “X is using the same kind of arguments and reasoning methods that tend to be associated with Y”. It does not mean that X is a member of faction Y. So, in particular, there is no inconsistency if it turns out that CHS uses MRA logic but is not herself an MRA.
So your belief is that MRAs invented hunting for reasons to reject things that make them look bad.
And that before MRA that was someone people didn’t do?
What you are calling MRA logic is just self-serving logic and applying different standards of evidence to other people than they do themselves – a tradition as old as man.
This is a minor point, I admit, but it’s just silly how MRAs are now a boogeyman for everything. It’s like people just learned a new word and are eager to show it off.
“So your belief is that MRAs invented hunting for reasons to reject things that make them look bad.”
Nope, it takes a lot more than that to explain GG’s obsession with certain women in gaming.
OTOH, that probably works as an explanation for your own behavior here.
I wrote:
“You don’t have to recognize it by that name, or even be aware you’re using it.”
Men’s Rights Advocacy is explicitly concerned with resisting female/feminist encroachment upon traditionally male/masculine-dominated areas.
And that is precisely the undercurrent of GG criticisms of the work of Anita Sarkeesian, Leigh Alexander, Zoe Quinn — that they are interlopers in a male sphere, either by daring to talk about “male” things, or in ZQ’s case, by having made a “terrible, boring” game and using her feminine deviousness to get good press for it.
It also is explicitly part of the rhetoric of Milo, Adam Baldwin, and Christine Sommers, and the conservative right — of which Breitbart and the AEI are both unabashed organs.
Finally, we are talking about a movement that has saved it’s most sustained and vicious harassment for women.
This isn’t a “connect-the-dots” kind of deal. It’s right out there, in the open.
“Men’s Rights Advocacy is explicitly concerned with resisting female/feminist encroachment upon traditionally male/masculine-dominated areas. ”
If anything MR Advocacy is the opposite of that, encroaching upon traditionally female-dominated areas.
Two of the biggest issues for Men’s Right advocates are child custody and domestic abuse. Child custody is typically with the woman by default, and the latter is generally considered almost exclusively an issue of male on female with the reverse rarely recognized. Men’s Rights advocacy is much less “keep women out of our stuff” and much more “give us rights in areas that traditionally skew towards women.”
You seem to be confusing MRA speak with “Red Pill” speak, which is much more concerned with men acting alpha and being manly men.
Now it’s true that there are a lot of bitter dudes who hate women among MRAs, but there are also a lot of bitter dudes who aren’t MRAs, who are Red Pillers, who are pick up artists, etc. These are all different groups, being bitter towards women is no more unique to MRAs than to a bunch of other groups.
Again, it’s a minor point in the end, but it’s tiresome to see people use terms because they are faddish rather than because they best fit. It’s like GGers calling people feminists or Marxists – a lot of anti-GG people do share some ideology with feminists and Marxists but that doesn’t mean they employ feminist or Marxist logic.
It’s kind of silly to make this about MRAs – Milo is an MRA? Not as far as I can tell.
“Finally, we are talking about a movement that has saved it’s most sustained and vicious harassment for women.”
And Damion was most vicious towards CHS. So is he an MRA or guilty of using MRA logic?
Okay, these are actually kind of reasonable points. Maybe there is some kind of fine distinction between MRA arguments and other kinds of sexism.
But you have to admit it’s a pretty fine distinction–what unites MRAs and many sexists is that they move from the (correct) belief that some of the people that society mistreats are men, and sometimes sex differences play to the disadvantage of some men, to the (absurd) belief that society is overall biased against men.
Meaning, there are similarities and differences among different sexist arguments. The similarities aren’t 100%, but they’re a lot closer than “applying different standards of evidence to other people than they do themselves”.
I mean, come on, nobody is saying “I hate this weather, it’s so MRA today”.
“And Damion was most vicious towards CHS. So is he an MRA or guilty of using MRA logic?”
Neither. You are confusing criticism with harassment.
That said, I accept that there are subtle distinctions to be made between the different shades of resentful masculinists.
Good points Damien but the gamergate has become such a melting pot it will never truly go away and you are rigth it can be bad. A rallying cry for the worst of it. This needed a lot more reason from everyone but it had too much passion and anger on everyone on any side. But everything that created will still be here unfortunally.
And attacking everything that disagrees with you its always bad.
“Good points Damien but the gamergate has become such a melting pot it will never truly go away”
I disagree. I think the misogyny and rage have sunk it. I think it’s quickly disintegrating into a serpent, feeding on its own tale, precisely because it failed to separate its genuine issues from its most virulent fringe.
GG can only continue if it can divorce itself from the feverish conspiracy theories and volcanic misplaced rage that gave it birth. So far the trend is not encouraging.
I disagree. #Gamergate is in a situation where they can’t NOT be about harassment, no matter how hard they try. They are an organization that should be in PR crisis mode, the way the NFL was earlier this year with Ray Rice. Instead, the assholes of that movement keep digging the hole deeper.
I think we’re talking about the same thing.
GG can’t become or form a viable organization like your proposed GAMR without confronting and repudiating aspects of its own culture. So in that sense, I agree with you.
When I say it needs to separate itself from those events, I don’t mean “Ignore them and pretend they didn’t happen.” I mean “Confront, repudiate, and take a different track.” The final organization needs to be one that clearly draws a line in the sand between what it does and does not stand for and what it will and will not tolerate in its own name — as opposed to allowing the angriest and nastiest element to hijack the show.
On another matter how can everyone make the industry safer for women? This was a problem before gg and will remain if the hashtag goes under?
How can anyone ,who cares about the industry, and doesnt want to anyone to be afraid to go near it.
Progress is being made. Not fast enough, but the following steps are a good start:
1. Hire women in decision-making positions.
2. Task them with formulating anti-harassment and inclusive workplace policies.
3. Enforce the policies.
Enough studios are doing that now that more women feel comfortable working there than was the case 10 or even 5 years ago. It is known that this not only means more women will want to work in games, but they’ll contribute meaningfully to projects with a wider appeal.
Why are you implying that women are incapable of working in the industry without “men” instituting policies to make it “safe?”
Because feminism.
Because management is mostly men at this point, and it is there that workplace policies need to be set so that there’s no harassment. Many places where this is a problem (in any industry) are such due to either a top-down view that aligns with harassment, or due to lax oversight on the issue.
Because men hold almost all positions of power, make almost all decisions about what games get made and what doesn’t, and men make up about 80% of industry jobs right now.
That being said, I’ve never worked at a company that’s had TERRIBLE problems. Most of the problems that women I know have had have not been because of their coworkers, but because of the press or the audience.
Because women working in the industry are saying “this isn’t safe for us” and we believe them, and have no particular desire to have our industries unsafe for women.
Why are you implying women who think the industry is unsafe should be abandoned when they ask for help in fixing it?
It doesn’t take many people to get out of hand when dealing with the internet. Europol talking about 100 cyber-kingpins starts to put matters of scale http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-2956778
And so it probably goes with Gamergate. A relatively small tightknit technically savvy group of individuals with an axe to grind and an easily accessible audience that they can direct to do the majority of their dirty work.
Such is life in a technical age of instant communication.
It is depressing to think that given such amazing resources such as the internet, it is put to such petty and random acts of violence.
I’m getting a busted link here.
http://www.bbc.co.UK/news/technology-29567782
My bad, managed to clip a 2 off the end, I usually double check all links :/