#GamerGate

lilyWhite

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It's my understanding that Quinn was the indirect cause of the explosion, because the people who were targeting her with a misogynistic or at least sexist motivation triggered the "censorship". Most of the censorship apparently involved moderated forums and sites who decided, as private entities and based on previously-established moderation policies, to not allow unfettered trashing of Zoe Quinn. The wider corruption argument, at least at first, shows evidence of being a cover for the harassment of Quinn. The gaming media then got pissed off at the growth of attacks on them and posted the gamers are over articles.

One of the most notable examples of censorship came from Reddit, from this thread linking to TotalBiscuit's views on the initial controversy. His opinion was a very reasonable "if this is true, then it reflects poorly on those involved, but we really should wait until the dust settles to figure things out".

Thousands of comments were deleted. To be perfectly frank, I seriously doubt all of those comments fell into "misogyny". Were there some sexist idiots who made sexist attacks? Almost certainly. But that doesn't justify censoring every opinion on the matter.

I suppose your third point makes sense, but it seems a bit irresponsible on the part of #Gamergate rs to conflate these three issues in the way that they have...

I don't think so. All of them have an underlying theme: criticism of gaming journalism.
 
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Alessandra Kelley

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If I didn't know anything about an issue that both sides were equally strident and passionate about, I'd assume the side issuing rape threats were the wrong ones.

I'm still pacing myself, but I'm just going to slip a quiet +1 in here.

+2 because, even if they're not the wrong ones...they're the wrong ones.

+ whatever this has gotten up to, because whatever else is going on, this is absolutely true. No one issuing rape threats is ever on the side of good.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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What's clear is that the dark misogynistic underbelly of online gamer culture has crawled out of the woodworks and taken off their masks and reared their ugly heads with furor and aplomb.

At this point, it's not really about a right side and a wrong side.

It's about that classic pig-headed fallacy called "but not all men are rapists/abusers/misogynists".

It's technically "right", but nobody was saying that in the first place.

And for bigots and bureaucrats, being "technically" right is the only kind of right.

It is interesting to see how much more passionate these men are about always including that coda than they are about actual rape threats.
 

Roxxsmom

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I so don't get this. I don't get why some people are so bent out of shape about suggestions that the gaming industry consider how it portrays women, and I certainly don't understand why there are people who think it's acceptable to send death and rape threats to women they disagree with (while hotly denying that sexism is a thing in the gaming industry).

And I really don't get how anyone can shrug this kind of behavior off or tell women they need to grow thicker skins, because it's just the way gamer guys of a certain age talk.

I don't game much anymore, and the games I tended to play when I did were mostly strategic games like Civilization, Age of Empires, the Anno series and so on. There was some sexism, perhaps, in the under-representation of female units as default units or figures at times, but they usually weren't half naked, at least. I played WoW, and there was some sexism there. From what I gather, it's the tip of the iceberg, though.

And no one has ever said that all men (or even most men) are rapists or abusers or misogynists, in gaming or elsewhere. They've said that too many men are and have asked the men who aren't to be allies in condemning and containing it. Why is that so hard for some people to understand?
 
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kuwisdelu

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I so don't get this. I don't get why some people are so bent out of shape about suggestions that the gaming industry consider how it portrays women, and I certainly don't understand why there are people who think it's acceptable to send death and rape threats to women they disagree with (while hotly denying that sexism is a thing in the gaming industry).

And I really don't get how anyone can shrug this kind of behavior off or tell women they need to grow thicker skins, because it's just the way gamer guys of a certain age talk.

What really disturbs me is that when I read articles about these issues, I see the misogyny come out in the comments even on what I consider to be very intellectual sites that should be above that, like Ars Technica.
 

robjvargas

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And no one has ever said that all men (or even most men) are rapists or abusers or misogynists, in gaming or elsewhere. They've said that too many men are and have asked the men who aren't to be allies in condemning and containing it. Why is that so hard for some people to understand?

Because this keeps coming up, I have to keep responding: You do not know that they (we) are not being allies. That was part of my responses previously.

Pretend for a moment that I know one of the misogynists. If I can speak to him face-to-face and call him out on that behavior and on his words, how would you know that I have *or* have not done so? Is it only legitimate when you see it online? Am I not an ally if I take it offline like that? AND, how do you know that my friend in this scenario hasn't reversed course if he opts to take a break from what he did?

You don't know what's happening outside those comments sections and twitter feeds. While it may be nice to know that the misogyny is, in fact, being condemned, no one owes you that knowledge.
 

Roxxsmom

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If most men who gamed called out, ostracized and marginalized (and just plain avoided) the pricks that were doing this stuff, the behavior would become exceedingly rare, methinks. People are motivated by a desire to be liked and accepted by their peers. They do these things because they think the silent majority agree with and support them. Because they think it makes them popular.

This language.

All of those things are trivially easy to understand, to "get". (To the first five (!): The people in question are, to varying degrees, bigots and misogynists. Along with everything that suggests.) Not very hard.

Using "I don't get ..." as a stand in for "I find it appalling that ..." should never ever be done.

Sorry, I'm a product of my generation here. "I don't get" is a figure of speech that's pretty ingrained in my psyche. Didn't know it was offensive.

But to be honest, as someone who has only gamed in a very limited way and has never really participated much in gamer's forums, or fandom in general (though I've been a fan of SF and F all my life, I haven't been the kind of fan who goes to cons, and most of what I've learned about these issues has come from discovering writer's blogs and sites like this one in recent years) and so on, I really do feel like I'm missing a lot about this conflict and why it's grown so acrimonious. I gather something similar is happening in the Skeptics community, which unlike the gaming community, has a lot of highly educated and politically liberal academic types involved in it.

If it were just the vicious misogynists who were doing the death and rape threats against everyone else, well it would make sense. They'd be marginalized, ignored, ostracized, banned, booted and whatnot. But in fact, there are a lot of people who seem to be defending them, or at least insisting that what they're doing isn't "that bad."
 
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kuwisdelu

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If most men who gamed called out, ostracized and marginalized (and just plain avoided) the pricks that were doing this stuff, the behavior would become exceedingly rare, methinks. People do these things because they think the silent majority agree with and support them.

I think the real problem here are the many gamers that aren't obvious misogynists threatening rape, who may even repudiate the obvious misogynists, but who still go on to essentially say "but why do feminists have to keep bringing politics into gaming; why can't we just enjoy the status quo"?

Being an ally is about a lot more than not threatening rape on the internet and condemning those who do.
 
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Amadan

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I think the real problem here are the many gamers that aren't obvious misogynists threatening rape, who may even repudiate the obvious misogynists, but who still go on to essentially say "but why do feminists have to keep bringing politics into gaming; why can't we just enjoy the status quo"?

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Not everyone who doesn't climb all the way on board the Social Justice bandwagon is saying "Why can't we just enjoy the status quo?"
 

kuwisdelu

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I don't think that's entirely accurate. Not everyone who doesn't climb all the way on board the Social Justice bandwagon is saying "Why can't we just enjoy the status quo?"

When you go out of the way to make comments on reviews condemning them on the basis of their containing feminist criticisms and generally don't see feminism as having a legitimate role in gaming culture? Yes.
 

Roxxsmom

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I think calling it the "social justice bandwagon" right there sums up the attitude pretty well. The concerns of people who have not been historically regarded as "normal, default human beings" is thought of as some kind of laughable or irritating "fad" by at least some of the people who have been more fortunate that way.

Wanting more accurate and varied representation for women (and other groups as well) in gaming or whatever is "political." Wanting to keep things the way they are (with the sensibilities of a certain type of white, straight males as the default norm) isn't.

Okay then.
 
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Amadan

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I think calling it the "social justice bandwagon" right there sums up the attitude pretty well. The concerns of people who have not been historically regarded as "normal, default human beings" is thought of as some kind of laughable or irritating "fad" by at least some of the people who have been more fortunate that way.


That's what I'm talking about.

I want more accurate and varied representation for women (and other groups as well). I do not think the sensibilities of a certain type of white, straight male should be the default norm.

Nothing I said contradicts that. But I have some problems with a lot of the modern "Social Justice" movement. Saying this, however, places one squarely in the enemy camp. Okay then.
 

mccardey

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Nothing I said contradicts that. But I have some problems with a lot of the modern "Social Justice" movement. Saying this, however, places one squarely in the enemy camp. Okay then.

Only because you're using the term "Social Justice" movement with all the indicators suggesting it's kind of false, kind of monolithic and doesn't have nuance.

It's probably just that you haven't defined which social justice movement you're talking about, and which aspects of it are problematic.
 

Roxxsmom

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I think we can always disagree with some elements of anything without wanting to toss the baby with the bathwater.

The phrase "social justice movement" is now used as a sort of catch all word to toss out when someone makes a comment about sexism, racism, heterosexism, or cis-genderism etc. that one disagrees with.

Reminds me of how the word "politically correct" got coopted to be used in the same way.

I consider myself a feminist. This doesn't mean I agree with everything every feminist has ever said about gender or that everyone who considers him or herself to be a feminist will agree with everything I believe. And sometimes I even get gobsmacked by the realization that something I've done or said might be sexist, or may be dismissing a group of feminists who have different (but equally legitimate) concerns than I do.
 
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mccardey

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I think we can always disagree with some elements of anything without wanting to toss the baby with the bathwater.

Well, a lot depends on the baby of course. Oh wait - that's a figure of speech, isn't it?

Damn!
 

Amadan

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The phrase "social justice movement" is now used as a sort of catch all word to toss out when someone makes a comment about sexism, racism, heterosexism, or cis-genderism etc. that one disagrees with.


By some. But it is also used by Social Justice activists themselves (complete with the capitalization). Of course there is no one single monolithic "Social Justice Movement" with a uniform manifesto and a governing committee, but I think it's fairly well established that it is a thing that exists, largely online, with an understood ethos, jargon, and casus belli. It's not just "people who believe in progressive causes."

My point, when I used the term, with regard to the #GamerGate phenomenon, is that the SJ movement has turned Zoe Quinn into a sort of martyr, condensing the narrative down to "This woman spoke up on the Internet and she got rape threats!"

It's more complicated than that, and one can simultaneously believe that Zoe Quinn is a terrible person (and overrated as a game developer) and that people sending her rape threats are even more terrible people. Ditto Anita Sarkeesian - much of her behavior, and indeed, her entire campaign, is problematic, and open to criticism. But she's also gotten a lot of nastiness spewed at her, so that's pretty much the only thing open for discussion unless one wants to be accused of implicitly condoning or at least failing to condemn the trolls.
 

lilyWhite

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The thing about "feminism" or "social justice" is that there is no single school of thought when it comes to either of those ideas. There are many different breeds of feminism and many different views on what constitutes social justice. Neither of those terms automatically lend validity to what someone says or automatically demonstrate bigotry on the part of those who disagree with anything said in the name of "feminism" or "social justice". There are plenty of valid and reasonable things said in regards to either of those things, there are plenty of idoitic things branded as "feminism"/"social justice", and there are even those whose idea of "feminism" or "social justice" is blatant bigotry. And of course, different people are going to see different brands of "feminism"/"social justice" fall into each of these categories based on their own views.

The problem is that some of the most prominent voices express views in the vein of "(X) is problematic and games should do (Y)! And if you disagree, you're a stupid bigot dudebro!" (Case in point: many of the "gamers are dead!" articles that came out.) There's a complete refusal to consider or acknowledge the possible validity of other viewpoints. And much like any movement or group (including #GamerGate itself, both for its proponents and opponents), it's the more extremist attitudes that tend to circulate and get stuck in people's minds over more moderate stances and displays of those views.

There's a problem when a subculture uses "feminism" as an insult.

Broad generalizations would be part of the problem as well.
 

Hapax Legomenon

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Also, a slightly troubling question: Why wouldn't someone be on the social justice bandwagon?

Some people do not appreciate bandwagons as a matter of principle, no matter how compelling the bandwagon...
 

Helix

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Maybe it's not a bandwagon. Maybe those who believe in social justice do so for well considered and legitimate reasons. Maybe 'bandwagon' is a term used to cast aspersions on the sincerity of those people.