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#gamerhate: Misogyny and More in the Gaming Industry

Gamergate, in the moral and ethical sense, is in fact a facade for a campaign driven by misogynist men in the gaming world.

Twenty-four year old Eron Gjoni, member of the gaming world, posted on his blog accusations of an affair his ex-girlfriend, Zoe Quinn, had allegedly had with another gaming journalist in order to boost her own gaming profile and reviews. Despite whether this is true or not – although it has in large part been deemed false or irrelevant – it sparked a huge backlash and triggered a campaign supposedly concerned with the ethics of journalism.

Quinn has been the victim of threats and doxxing (the act of publishing somebody’s personal information such as their address on the internet). Which has lead to personal attacks, including phone calls from strangers to her father denouncing her as a “whore”, and to her having to move home.

Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist pop culture critic and defender of Quinn, has also had to leave her house and had to cancel a talk at Utah State University this month as she received a message stating that the “deadliest school shooting” in US history would occur if she proceeded to give a talk at the university.

Game developer and condemner of Gamergate Brianna Wu has also been forced to move from her home after receiving a plethora of threats including one tweet which said, “I’ve got a K-bar and I’m coming to your house so I can shove it up your ugly feminist cunt.”

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The gaming industry has been criticised in the past for its attitudes regarding women, whether this be the pejorative portrayal of women in games or the way women in the industry are treated. Quinn watched as numerous men conversed on the forum 4Chan about ways in which they could eliminate her from the industry, although a petition was also signed by 2,000 people in the gaming industry in a bid to condemn such threats and violence against Quinn.

With a large male population, the gaming industry could have great influence in changing certain perceptions of women and it has been argued that the male gamers of today are in fact more liberal in their views and less likely to support the sexist traits within the gaming world. Yet this begs the question, why does the industry continue to perpetuate stereotypes and show hostility towards women? Somebody wants to maintain the industry as a male-dominated, sexist one.

An article in Le Monde highlighted that such virulent attacks on women are not isolated to the gaming community however but that they are mere examples of the type of widespread misogyny in society. Women have been threatened for “speaking out” in numerous spheres: Labour MP Stella Creasy was threatened with rape after campaigning for Jane Austen to be on a bank note; journalists including Hadley Freeman and Grace Dent were tweeted by somebody saying they had triggered a bomb outside of the journalists’ homes; and female bloggers (strongly feminist or not) don’t cease being the targets of abuse and misogynistic opinions.

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Can hostility to this extent truly all be down to the fact that men feel threatened by women? That in order to preserve and exude their masculinity, they must subject women to violence, or threats of violence concerning rape, in order to establish that they are the dominating force and that they have no place in male dominated industries. Campaigns such as Gamergate show that there are many men who refuse to accept women as anything other than objects that must be controlled and manipulated.  If objectification is sustained, as it is in and outside of the gaming world, men are more likely to expect a limited female role and to thus attack and maintain that strict role when it exceeds its boundaries.

Committed abuse filled with such vitriol underlines that women are subject to harassment especially in spheres where they have some kind of influence or success. The threats-and sexual threats especially-are so persistent and shocking in their content they scream for closer monitoring of sites such as Twitter but more importantly for a firm stance from male-dominated industries such as the gaming industry and for a general change in cultural attitudes.

The fact that the Gamergate campaign has continued to advocate its righteous cause for journalistic ethics whilst launching an intense misogynistic one highlights that men have opportunistically made women the problem whilst hiding behind a smokescreen. The true issue of journalistic ethics has been sidelined for a platform of misogynistic abuse in the hope of eliminating women from the gaming world. Fear will drive them away, they hope. I’m still writing and I’m not scared I’m angry. Fear will rule misogynists but women won’t be ruled by fear. Industries, work places, social networks and the law must however take a strict, bold stance against internet harassment and misogynist abuse.

Rachel Winterbottom

Image credits: jooOey, Anita Sarkeesian and seandreilinger

Categories
FeaturesGaming
2 Comments on this post.
  • Anonymous
    18 November 2014 at 14:14
    Leave a Reply

    1) There is no limitation to who can use a hashtag so there is no actual guarantee that these threats are coming from legitimate supporters of gamergate.

    2) Zoey Quinn got a charity gamejam event by femenist game devs for female games shut down to increase the success of her gamejam which didn’t even have details on when it was going to occur. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/the-fine-young-capitalists-game-jam

    3) No credible threats have been made. If you get a threat you think is credible you take it to the police not to twitter. In fact the FBI states that you should not publicise death threats as it hinders their investigation.

    4) It is not only female characters who are portrayed in sexulised stereotypes, most male game characters are insanely muscular.

    5) This entire movement is a response to a major portion of the gaming media declaring gamers dead in a co-ordinated attack across many sites.

    6) Try to follow the logic and tactics employed by some of these “critiques” and you will see that the hatred has nothing to do with their gender.
    logical statements from a Sarkeesian video
    a) Games are misogynist.
    b) Games use violence against women, as a plot device, to make a location seem foreboding.
    c) Games use violence against women, as a plot device, to make the player hate a certain character.

    OED definition of misogynist
    A person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women:

    If gamers were misogynistic then b and c would not have the effect they do as they rely on violence against women being seen as abhorrent.

    7) People on both sides of the movement have been receiving tonnes of death threats. On a recent Q&A live stream carried out by some well known #GamerGate proponents an opponent came on and stated that all gamers should be put in death camps and gassed.

    8) Given that #GamerGate is a leaderless consumer revolt whose sole purpose is to end corruption in journalism it is in the interest of said journalists to portray gamers has harassers and to send threats to both parties in the names of each other to keep the focus away from themselves.

    9) There are sub section within #GamerGate dedicated entirely to finding the sources of threats from within the movement and punishing them as they are damaging to the movement.

    10) #GamerGate has donated thousands to varying charities full list here http://gamergate.me/charity/

    11) There is an entire movement called #NotYourShield by the minorities which these “social justice warriors” use as examples of oppression which exists to state “Actually we don’t agree with what you are saying stop using us as scapegoats”

    12) Many of the things said by these SJWs are said purely to attract aggressive responses purely so they can play the victim. e.g. Sarkeesian blaming a school shooting on “Toxic ideas about masculinity”.

    13) Many of these SJWs make statements which they either do not back up with evidence or with incomplete/out of context statistics.

    14) These SJWs have pulled the same trick before. Look up atheism plus, a movement which pushed atheism conventions to include things like a policy stating that “yes means yes, no means no, and maybe means no”.

    15) Sarkeesian still hasn’t finished the series which she got the $180,000 to produce which was attained 2 years ago and has produced little but cherry picked clips and statements with no academic studies to back up.

    16) There has already been an instance where the police were called in by a social justice warrior to investigate some threats made against them where the police actually found the threats were made from their laptop while they were using it. The chances are a lot of these threats are being made either by these people or their followers to vilify their opposition.

    It doesn’t matter what your gender is, who you support politically, what colour your skin is or what religion you practice. If you say something which is going to appear offensive or stupid and don’t follow it up with scientific evidence people are going to call bullshit and are going to, over time, get less and less restrained in how they respond.

    If you are just going to post summaries of articles from places which aren’t going to bother to do research then just post a list of links instead otherwise you are just contributing the the self referential journalism loop which was part of the problem which #GamerGate wants to address.

    If you attack a group who have been bullied all their lives over a medium where they have the power you WILL get a lot of backlash because we are, as a collective, sick of the crap we have had to put up with throughout our lives due to people taking things at face value

    To put it bluntly in a way everyone will understand, the proponents of #GamerGate don’t care who/what you are, you are welcome in the industry as long as your focus is on making entertaining games and aren’t going to use corruption to further your career.

  • Anonymous
    18 November 2014 at 14:25
    Leave a Reply

    1) There is no limitation to who can use a hashtag so there is no actual guarantee that these threats are coming from legitimate supporters of gamergate.

    2) Zoey Quinn got a charity gamejam event by femenist game devs for female games shut down to increase the success of her gamejam which didn’t even have details on when it was going to occur. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/the-fine-young-capitalists-game-jam

    3) No credible threats have been made. If you get a threat you think is credible you take it to the police not to twitter. In fact the FBI states that you should not publicise death threats as it hinders their investigation.

    4) It is not only female characters who are portrayed in sexulised stereotypes, most male game characters are insanely muscular.

    5) This entire movement is a response to a major portion of the gaming media declaring gamers dead in a co-ordinated attack across many sites.

    6) Try to follow the logic and tactics employed by some of these “critiques” and you will see that the hatred has nothing to do with their gender.
    logical statements from a Sarkeesian video
    a) Games are misogynist.
    b) Games use violence against women, as a plot device, to make a location seem foreboding.
    c) Games use violence against women, as a plot device, to make the player hate a certain character.

    OED definition of misogynist
    A person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women:

    If gamers were misogynistic then b and c would not have the effect they do as they rely on violence against women being seen as abhorrent.

    7) People on both sides of the movement have been receiving tonnes of death threats. On a recent Q&A live stream carried out by some well known #GamerGate proponents an opponent came on and stated that all gamers should be put in death camps and gassed.

    8) Given that #GamerGate is a leaderless consumer revolt whose sole purpose is to end corruption in journalism it is in the interest of said journalists to portray gamers has harassers and to send threats to both parties in the names of each other to keep the focus away from themselves.

    9) There are sub section within #GamerGate dedicated entirely to finding the sources of threats from within the movement and punishing them as they are damaging to the movement.

    10) #GamerGate has donated thousands to varying charities full list here http://gamergate.me/charity/

    11) There is an entire movement called #NotYourShield by the minorities which these “social justice warriors” use as examples of oppression which exists to state “Actually we don’t agree with what you are saying stop using us as scapegoats”

    12) Many of the things said by these SJWs are said purely to attract aggressive responses purely so they can play the victim. e.g. Sarkeesian blaming a school shooting on “Toxic ideas about masculinity”.

    13) Many of these SJWs make statements which they either do not back up with evidence or with incomplete/out of context statistics.

    14) These SJWs have pulled the same trick before. Look up atheism plus, a movement which pushed atheism conventions to include things like a policy stating that “yes means yes, no means no, and maybe means no”.

    15) Sarkeesian still hasn’t finished the series which she got the $180,000 to produce which was attained 2 years ago and has produced little but cherry picked clips and statements with no academic studies to back up.

    16) There has already been an instance where the police were called in by a social justice warrior to investigate some threats made against them where the police actually found the threats were made from their laptop while they were using it. The chances are a lot of these threats are being made either by these people or their followers to vilify their opposition.

    It doesn’t matter what your gender is, who you support politically, what colour your skin is or what religion you practice. If you say something which is going to appear offensive or stupid and don’t follow it up with scientific evidence people are going to call bullshit and are going to, over time, get less and less restrained in how they respond.

    If you are just going to post summaries of articles from places which aren’t going to bother to do research then just post a list of links instead otherwise you are just contributing the the self referential journalism loop which is part of the problem which #GamerGate wants to address.

    If you attack a group who have been bullied all their lives over a medium where they have the power you WILL get a lot of backlash because we are, as a collective, sick of the crap we have had to put up with throughout our lives due to people taking things at face value

    To put it bluntly in a way everyone will understand, the proponents of #GamerGate don’t care who/what you are, you are welcome in the industry as long as your focus is on making entertaining games and aren’t going to use corruption to further your career.

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