My Tribe, Right or Wrong
Irradiated by LabRat
So, after what feels like years and has actually been about two and a half months, I’m finally going to talk about Gamergate. I’ve been neck deep in this shit since the first Reddit post went up since it hits gaming, feminism, and has now somehow invaded my gunnie and libertarian circles as well, which means basically every fucking social circle I’m in either directly or tangentially save roller derby is freaking the fuck out about it and I can’t really go anywhere to get away from it without total social isolation. And I only get to skate twice a week right now. So I’m finally irritated enough to Say My Piece. And therefore jump in with both feet. Which means I’m going to be engaging in the Comment Wars for what I consider the stupidest cultural conflict since Chickfildammerung. Yes I am self-aware about this personal flaw.
First off- I agree with pretty much everything Ken said. Therefore I’m not necessarily going to address every point I actually agree with, nor exhaustively source everything as he’s already done most of it and I’m busy as fuck this weekend and can’t spend all day on this. I realize asking you to Read The Whole Thing is unreasonable, but before you launch a broadside at me about uncritically supporting “Social Justice Warriors” or accepting every claim made about threats and doxxing with automatic acceptance rather than sourcing, I’d appreciate it if you’d save us both the trouble of me calling you a lazy dumbass and check to see if the answer’s already there first. Hi Ken. I’m a fangirl.
So, going to go with the Arguments I Have Seen That Make Me Facepalm. If you haven’t made this argument? It ain’t about you. And frankly, most of my objections are political rather than feministy, given my biggest source of incredulity is seeing this from libertarian circles.
1. “Actually it’s about ethics in gaming journalism”
Sorry Cholly but no it ain’t, or at least “Gamergate” isn’t. The whole ridiculous mess started when Zoe Quinn’s angry ex made a post on Reddit about how she was crazy and cheated on him and, this is the important bit, slept with a Kotaku reviewer to get a good review for her indie game Depression Quest. Except this claim is trivially easy to verify as total fabrication, because no one at Kotaku ever reviewed the damn game. This takes about ten seconds on Google to figure out.
Gaming journalism is a fucking joke and could use some ethics. But you know what? This has been true for the entire history of its EXISTENCE. I’ve been seeing banner ads on sites with positive reviews of a game advertising the freaking game, with the ad ON THE REVIEW, for as long as there have been online gaming journalism and banner ads. Every gamer who hasn’t been living in an actual cave knows reviews from any “game journalist” who isn’t completely independent and getting paid nothing are bought and sold, mostly by major gaming companies.
So I think I’m pretty justified in regarding “it’s really about ethics” in a “scandal” that started with a completely bogus claim about a game developer whose game has been free to play since its inception who happens to be female, involves wide-scale doxxing, harassment, and rape/death threats, and not with any element of the actual long-standing problem, as raw steaming bullshit. Sure, some of the people making this claim may be totally sincere. But with respect, y’all have picked the wrong tag and moment in history to attach your outrage to. In theory this maybe shouldn’t matter because the validity of an argument shouldn’t be affected by those things; in practice yes it fucking does. None of us are impressed when an anti-gun advocate chooses the night of a mass shooting, done by a shooter with stolen or illegally possessed guns who was a known nutjob, to rant about legal CCW. And we aren’t wrong to level the blood-dancing charge then.
2. “I haven’t been following anything about this until just now, and I’m not a gamer and don’t play video games, but this is obviously just another case of SJWs picking something to manufacture outrage about”
Hey, thanks for admitting right up front that you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, then. I’m glad you weighed in to register your literally ignorant opinion! “It must all be stupid bullshit because I think these people are whiny SJWs and some SJWs were mean to me/my friend once” is the definition of reflexive tribalism. Which I loathe.
3. “Women and gay people/minorities should expect this kind of reaction when they invade gaming”
Fuck you. We didn’t “invade”. I’ve got thick calluses on both thumbs, need to replace both of my PS3 controllers because I’ve worn them out and they’re starting to get flaky, spend a lot of time PC gaming too, and I’ve been playing video games since 1988. When I started games were aimed at kids, not young men specifically, and certainly not “straight white dudes”. Somewhere in the mid nineties the gaming industry made the decision that since they comprised their biggest market share so far as they could tell, it was a waste of time to develop and market for anyone else. (You can actually read about the specific market study that they latched onto for this if you Google for a bit.) We’re not newcomers; the gaming industry left us. But we didn’t leave; we just didn’t have much of a voice. Then since that entire generation that grew up gaming with the first home consoles is now old enough to have jobs in gaming and writing about games, we do. The guys that felt gaming was theirs just aren’t able to go through life thinking we don’t exist anymore.
Most gamers are in their 30s (coincidentally born around that early eighties time!) and nearly half are female. You can sputter all you want about female gamers not playing “real games” (which seem to be exclusively defined by these people as games targeted very narrowly at straight white young men), but we’re just as much the consumers of games as these guys are. We pays our money: we’re the market too. This is how markets WORK- or at least it’s how free markets do.
4. “Getting harassed is just what happens in games, guys do it to each other too, it’s happened to me, harden up”
“Women get disproportionately harassed” != “men never get harassed”. Most female gamers- and for that matter internet pundits- have experience with what happens when they go under an identifiably female identity and what happens when they go under a male or gender-neutral one. (Which, in gaming, is always assumed to be male.) When I’m playing online I don’t go around saying “I’M A WOMAN” or “I’M A DUDE” unless it becomes relevant to some discussion, but I do favor roles and classes that are always assumed to be male. (I play tanks and heavy-armor melee.) There IS a difference, a big one, in how I get treated when I don’t have that “must be a guy” assumption operating. I still get shit-talked and trolled (which I cheerfully hand right back), but it’s not nearly as intense, as personal, or as flat-out mean. All the female gamers I know have had pretty much the same experience, if their experience in gaming and internetting is at all extensive. Because you, the guy, at whom this stuff isn’t directed, have one experience, doesn’t mean yours is at all applicable to someone else, let alone overrides it. (And before it comes out, yes I am aware men have experiences women simply don’t too.)
Can we please acknowledge that though rape and death threats happen to everyone, it’s pretty disproportionately men to women and not the other way around? I’ve never actually seen an SJW do this to a gamergater, but I’ve seen LOTS the other way around. And please call me when there’s a mass shooting of men by a woman outraged about men rather than a man outraged about women and “feminists” shooting women. (Marc Lepine, George Sodini, Eliot Rodgers.)
5. “SJWs are trying to drive men out of the industry/out of gaming and must be opposed at every turn!”
Orly? Show me. I’m quite serious here. I’ve never seen an anti-gamergater suggest that straight white men, or all men, be driven out, let alone advocated for government force of law to step in and help them do it.
Oh, but they’ve called for boycotts, and said some really mean things about those gamers, and stereotyped, and attacked a lot of aspects of the gaming industry as it is? THIS IS HOW FREE SPEECH AND THE FREE MARKET FUCKING WORK! This is my huge political objection, right here. Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from criticism, it certainly doesn’t mean freedom from pointed criticism, it doesn’t mean freedom from mockery, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean protection from social consequences for speech, whether it’s deserved or not. Yes, this applies to the SJWs too.
What it DOESN’T apply to is threats, of organized harassment explicitly aimed at driving devs out of the industry altogether (which as Ken points out has happened repeatedly), and while still well within the bounds of that free speech, pressuring advertisers into pulling out of anyplace that criticizes you kinda skeezy too as a response to criticism. (AGAIN: this applies to the SJWs too.)
And when the people running under your flag are doing this repeatedly, claiming victimhood while they do EXACTLY what they’re (falsely) accusing their opponents of doing in the name of pre-emptive self-defense, and you’re standing by going “well it’s unfair to paint a movement by its extremists” while they’re getting real-world traction enough to drive people out of their jobs or out of their homes and get the FBI involved, twice- sorry but I’m not going to take you seriously. Is this the hill you’re really going to die on? There are no other trenches in your culture war to set up in that don’t contain people fighting a war against women in general in what they think is their domain? When Islamists do this shit we call it terrorism, not trolling.
When female game developers and programmers aren’t a single-digit percentage of the industry anymore, maybe then I might begin taking seriously the notion that they’re “taking over”. Or better yet? Over 50%. You know, reflective of our actual population. (Before I hear about it: NO I am not fucking advocating any sort of intervention to make this happen, I’m just horselaughing at the notion that there’s an actual takeover or persecution campaign against men of any sort.)
I point out: even 4chan has banned gamergate discussions. Why? Because those threads have extensive doxxing and coordinated harassment planning in them. Which is one of those few things 4chan doesn’t permit. When fucking 4chan has disavowed you because of your shitty tactics, it’s time to re-evaluate your life choices and choice of allies in particular.
6. “SJWs have attacked us on x front so we must fight them here too regardless of how it started”
Combined with the above especially, I’m not necessarily going to call you a misogynist unless you otherwise show me that you are, but I am going to call you a hypocrite. As well as point out that this is the “Billy hit me first” school of argument that really we all should have outgrown in middle school.
And as my last salvo: before you pull out “judging by a few extremists”, please direct me to the gamergaters who are taking all of the above seriously and speaking strongly against them. And I really don’t mean Bendilin Spurr, the guy who claimed gamergate was against harassment and also produced the “Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian” interactive web game.
To recap: it’s a movement with a completely incoherent argument started by an obvious lie, infested by doxxers and people doing something we normally define as terrorism when it’s people we don’t identify with in some way, championed by libertarians who apparently don’t see a problem with the fact that the actual “fight” is against people using speech and the free market to advance their interests. For the crime of disrespecting a self-described identity group, whose reaction is incidentally proving that much of what they say about misogyny in the gaming culture is completely correct.
Beautiful. I’ll even hand you a flag to plant on that hill. Defend it to your last breath.
October 31st, 2014 at 3:12 pm
Watching the Morality squad and the Social Justice Weenies knifing each other, while swirling down the toilet into the cesspool of the internet, kinda reminds me of the Iran-Iraq war, and Operation Barbarossa …
Is there some way we can arrange for both sides to lose?
October 31st, 2014 at 4:02 pm
“Watching the Morality squad…”
Watching the what now?
October 31st, 2014 at 4:17 pm
I don’t game , and in fact have no idea what gamergate even is . However if you come on back over ill be glad to mansplain things to you over the hobo heater
October 31st, 2014 at 4:31 pm
I love telling people about how my brother would lock his bedroom door while he was gone so I wouldn’t play his coleco/atari/intellivision and I would pop my way in with a screwdriver. Clearly, as a kindergartner, I was simply thinking ahead for when I could use this to invade man-only spaces and make people angry.
… wait, isn’t that exactly what I was doing? I need to sit down.
October 31st, 2014 at 4:57 pm
FD- sure, long as you keep the fire hot.
Leigh- OH SHIT PARADOX
October 31st, 2014 at 6:39 pm
Great stuff! Thanks for giving an informed perspective on an issue that’s attracted far more heat than light. I’ve refrained from writing about it, as I’m not a gamer and am not part of the ‘scene’ that’s being discussed. Even so, the hysteria has been irritating, to say the least.
Hugs from Nashville to you and Stingray from Miss D. and I.
November 1st, 2014 at 4:45 am
When you get to these sort of crusades, the root cause isn’t really important to the participants. The important thing is that they get to be a nasty little amoral asshole for good and right. After all, God wills it.
November 1st, 2014 at 7:34 am
Thanks for this.
My impression was previously that Gamergate was basically a media customer base rebelling against the ideological takeover of the media that sells to them, which is a thing I always like to see. I’m sad that it’s not.
I play video games a couple hours a day (more between contracts) but I don’t think I count as a gamer for this purpose because they are old, offline games and I don’t read or write about them on social media.
November 1st, 2014 at 9:38 am
Thank you for this. I was an old school gamer. Took a hiatus and am getting back in. Would you like to see my Atari 2600? Ok, so it’s a Telegames. Now I’m on the committee that organizes the largest gaming convention in Oklahoma. Also, I’m female and not white, so apparently, I have a dog in the fight whether I want to or not.
Yes, there is a problem with ethics in game journalism. Gamergate is a long way from the solution.
November 1st, 2014 at 10:02 am
Tam:
Morality Squad: The mens rights activists and Dork Enlightenment crew that spend all day bitching about womens’ morality in the dating and marraige arena.
November 1st, 2014 at 10:04 am
They and the SJW crowd have pigpiled into what should have been a gamer’s in house issue.
November 1st, 2014 at 11:25 am
I’m not a gamer at all but I’ve been following the story a bit because I’ve been wondering what all those “explosions” were about.
I came across this Reason article ( http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/01/misandry-in-the-gamergate-controversy/?n_play=54551d00e4b025984392797a ) earlier and wondered what people thought.
November 1st, 2014 at 1:35 pm
I’m not real impressed with it. For one she repeats the rather easily checked claim that Zoe Quinn had slept with a Kotaku writer that gave her a positive review (yeah, no, Kotaku never gave her a review of any kind), for another she describes Christina Hoff-Sommers as a moderate (she’s been an antifeminist critic for years, and one known for repeating bullshit herself), and for another she makes the assertion that because there are some games where you can be a female protagonist that means the social criticism of games is probably fussy whining. (Ah, no, I’ve been playing a damn lot of games for a lot of years and while I’m not a Sarkeesian fan she has several valid points in among the ones I disagree with.)
Her followup article was actually part of the inspiration for the rant- she admits up front that she’s not a gamer, and then proceeds to detail more explicitly the “well there are some games where you can play as a woman so clearly there’s no problem” line of logic. Which, Mass Effect is a wonderful game and I played it avidly partly BECAUSE it’s one of the rare games that is story-based where the female option feels as fleshed out and “expected” as the male. That problem is, they’re rare, not that they don’t exist at all. To give you an example, I play two of EA’s sports titles; NHL 14 put as part of its advertising copy that you can play as a woman. Which I eagerly jumped into. Problem is? You get a choice of three generic heads as compared to the mens’ 30-something, and the announcers will refer to you as “he” regardless. The interview questions you get as part of the story mode also do, and those are text-based, so it would have been far less work and expense to tailor than the commentary tracks. Just because a game has a female option doesn’t mean it’s a remotely satisfying one. She makes a number of quite specific claims about the validity of the critics’ complaints without any personal experience of what they’re complaining about at all. She also complains about cherry-picked sources while… cherry-picking her sources. She also inexplicably uses the data on female gamers to dismiss the idea that the tight focus on young men as a market is actually the industry shooting itself in the foot. (A third of the market for “real” and not “casual” games- which apparently are not real- is women and that means devs shouldn’t bother? What-the-FUCK?)
My biggest problem, however, and what pushed me from indifference to “time to RANT”, is that she heads the second article with “this is an anti-authoritarian rebellion, not an anti-woman backlash”. Which… WHAT AUTHORITARIANISM? NO ONE has done anything more than criticize the industry and complain that a large chunk of market is being ignored. That’s classic speech, and speech pointing out that the market isn’t working as well as it should to boot. Not a single one of them that I know of has called for any sort of government solution. Meanwhile some female devs have been harassed out of the industry, Intel was pressured into pulling its advertising on Kotaku, and Mercedes-Benz did temporarily as well. Which, that is speech and boycotting is kosher- but painting men as the victims being hurt by “misandry” here is a grossly inaccurate representation of relative power and the actual consequences ensuing.
So the backlash against “authoritarianism” as she defines it is actually a backlash against being criticized. And I was totally fucking flabbergasted to see an article on Reason.com of all places taking that stance. If anyone in the entire fucking world should know better, it’s them.
November 1st, 2014 at 1:36 pm
I should probably clarify that I really don’t think the “SJWs”/critics shouldn’t be criticized themselves, or that none of those criticisms are valid- the reason I haven’t focused on them is that Ken has already said pretty much everything I was going to on that subject.
November 1st, 2014 at 4:13 pm
It seems (I’m talking about this as complete outsider to games, gamers and game culture), from the little I have read around the web (not reliable, I know) that the first big blow up (i.e. catching the attention of people outside of gamer community) came after the debunked charges of the designer sleeping with a reviewer to get a good review when the charges of misoginy and other insults to gamers started being thrown around; I vaguely remember commentary about an article by one person against gamergate (I think) which basically insulted male gamers as awful sexist nerds or something like that. To make it short, it looked like the “SJWs” were in a hurry to make it all about sexism and whatever other “ism” was applicable before the crux of the issue, whatever it was really was, got hashed out, and that the attitudes espoused by them got an enormous backlash. I don’t know if those are the facts, it’s just how it has seemed to me.
It all sounds extremely silly if all there was to talk about was the corruption of the gaming media which came out because some sort of sexual shenanigans became public. But then again, a lot of people , and it seems especially the SJWs, like to get on their moral and political high horse when they get criticized. It’s an attitude that seems to have become part of the larger culture nowadays. Both sides, with their various lingos, scream something along the lines of “you’re oppressing me!”
If we keep going down that road, it’s not going to end well and neither side is going to get what they thought they’d get.
November 1st, 2014 at 4:31 pm
The article you’re talking about is this article on Gamasutra. It didn’t assert people who play games are all horrible misogynist nerds- it asserted that the self-identity of “gamer” and “gamer culture” was infested with pretty deeply problematic attitudes. Like… throwing gigantic troll-war fits about anyone who dares to criticize that label or that culture. It actually DOES say that people who act like that are a vocal minority- it just attacks the tendency in the larger gaming culture (of which the writer herself is a member, since she WRITES FOR A GAMING SITE AND ALL) to just sort of shrug at the awful trolls.
It’s not saying people who play video games are over and should be driven out; it’s saying the people who’ve embraced the label most fervently and are now acting out are over, and their rage is at least partly because they know that. It’s not the first time a Gamasutra writer has expressed that opinion either- that the label itself actually puts people in a tiny marketing box, which people who are passionate about video games don’t actually deserve.
So naturally people who’d fully embraced that label threw a giant shit fit and pressured a major advertiser to withdraw from Gamasutra over it, and have been howling about how this oppressed and insulted them ever since. Which kinda proves her point with an underline and an exclamation point. (And I’m gonna go add a correction to the original post- it was Gamasutra that Intel pulled out of, not Kotaku.)
I still use the word “gamer” as a self-descriptor partly because it’s accurately descriptive of how involved I am in video games and gaming culture, and partly because it’s an upraised middle finger against the people who seem to think that identity should belong solely to them and people they identify as Of My Tribe. It’s an incredibly small thing but it’s an incredibly small thing that might remind a few that their tribe is a lot bigger than they think it is. But I see why a lot of people are dropping it.
And, yeah. One of the criticisms I have against the SJWs is they are acting like the people they criticize, minus the terror tactics. And the gamergaters are enthusiastically diving into the victim role they decry.
But I drop “well both sides” and turn my flamethrower in one’s direction when one of them is actively making excuses for those tactics.
November 1st, 2014 at 4:34 pm
Orrrr maybe I never said that at all in the actual post. Christ. I’ve been talking about this too much in too many places.
November 1st, 2014 at 8:36 pm
This controversy has had an effect on my life: I’ve looked inside my teapots to see if I can find any tempests.
November 1st, 2014 at 8:49 pm
There’s a fucking Category 5 hurricane in mine.
November 1st, 2014 at 9:44 pm
“Women and gay people/minorities should expect this kind of reaction when they invade gaming”
So brave, beating the crap out of that straw dummy.
I’d take you a bit more seriously if I’d heard people making the arguments you’re denouncing, or had experienced ANY actual homophobia in gaming (before I ran out of time and interest).
Although now you mention it, I am a little sympathetic to the last one. The “personal is political and anyone who disagrees with us is vile filth” ideology needs to be fought anywhere and everywhere.
I’m happy to see gamers getting into it like the atheists did before them, because it distracts the culture war from things I actually care about.
November 1st, 2014 at 9:58 pm
Should probably add, I’m also sympathetic to movements and people being smeared and labeled for pigheadedly fighting against “progress and social justice”.
You know, what with us being constantly mocked by the media as “bitter clingers” and “monosyllabic slightly-cross-eyed mouthbreathing misogynists” (h/t snarklord Tam).
November 2nd, 2014 at 1:00 am
Eggo,
“You know, what with us being constantly mocked by the media as “bitter clingers” and “monosyllabic slightly-cross-eyed mouthbreathing misogynists” (h/t snarklord Tam).”
Hey, here’s another snark quote for you: Fuck you sideways, you disingenuous shitweasel
November 2nd, 2014 at 1:02 am
Oh, I forgot: I wouldn’t piss in your mouth if your teeth were on fire.
November 2nd, 2014 at 7:59 am
Thanks for the link to article, it was interesting reading.
I didn’t understand it quite the same way you did. Mind you, at this hour, I’m not as clear minded as I could be. Still, the tone (and that’s very subjective) of the article felt much more as being angry at, perhaps, a certain group of people and generalized about all in a manner that appeared particularly mean and insulting (it may be accurate for all I know though).
I didn’t get the impression that she thinks it’s a small minority who act that way. She says:”Right, let’s say it’s a vocal minority that’s not representative of most people”. That doesn’t sound, to me, like she believes that, and the way she seems to keep generalizing for the rest of the article comes across, to me, like a veritable angry rant (which she has a perfect right to do) rather than article trying to get a point across. I imagine she could have used a different approach to get to the same point. The articles that she links to also seem, to me, to generalize very easily about the whole of the population as mysoginists and could be more parsing in their descriptions. On the other hand, they could be exactly accurate (I had to google 4Chan: I’ve never heard of it before) and I wouldn’t know.
Now the second article you linked came across as much more reasonable and, it seemed to me, explained rather well the changing demographics of the consumer and thus advocated for a change in outlook.
It seems like there’s an enormous amount of bad blood that started with a very small group and somehow the rest of the population got involved, picked sides (probably without thinking it through) and turned it into a culture war mess. At this point, it seems like the actual origins of this conflict matter little any more and that the goal of all involved is beat the other side (whatever that actually means for either of them).
November 2nd, 2014 at 10:19 am
Thanks for providing a clear and cogent discussion of the ‘issues’… Kinda glad I’m not involved.
November 2nd, 2014 at 10:35 am
Eggo:
Gotta love the old “I haven’t experienced it personally so therefore it doesn’t happen much or at all, because after all the world revolves around me.” I’m responding to the arguments because I HAVE seen them made. Repeatedly. Do you want links or are you going to call Goalpost U-Haul if you get them?
With a side order of… the title of my post! Hold still bro, I’m gonna take your picture so I can put it in the post with your comment captioned. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect distillation, and I sure couldn’t produce it myself.
There is nothing that proves your movement isn’t primarily made of up of adults throwing a giant, childlike temper tantrum than “PEOPLE WHO LOOK VAGUELY LIKE THOSE PEOPLE CALLED ME NAMES SO I’M WITH WHOEVER’S AGAINST THEM”. You keep on fighting the good fight! Because you’re proving my point for me.
I’m gonna skip the “leggo” joke, though.
November 2nd, 2014 at 10:42 am
Terry: fair enough. I don’t think it’s a particularly well-made point either, though as you say angry rants are just plain speech as well, and I still think the response is incredibly overblown.
I do think it makes a difference whether or not you’ve had direct experience with the people she’s talking about, or run into them everydamnwhere while gaming; I can sympathize some because I have. Then again, I’ve also come to the conclusion that actual adults are the large majority and mostly they keep quiet and let it pass by because they’re trying to play the goddamn game and have no interest in fighting a culture war while they’re trying to find a quest item or heal the dungeon. It does allow them to continue thinking they are themselves the majority, though.
Especially including women gamers, because seriously, who has time for that shit? I know I’ve let it go ten thousand times because whatever yappy little dog, I’ve got a raid to run. The ones that actually respond to the sammich jokes and “there are no girls on the internet” and “all of them are really forty year old guys” and “tits or GTFO” are young and haven’t learned yet how not worth it personally it is.
Unfortunately, the first Gamasutra writer is right: it means we’ve gone ahead and simply let them define the culture for us.
November 2nd, 2014 at 11:44 am
Dear Great Green Thighs of the Goddess, can I just say how much more relevant your post is to actual issues surrounding ethics in the 21st century than the absolute drek I have to deal with in my “Christian Ethics” (and all kinds of stuff wrong with just that, too)class here at _______________theological school!?!-I’m biased, of course, because I agree with everything you’re saying but…thank you, LR! Peace and health to you and Stingray and the furry legion.
November 2nd, 2014 at 11:52 am
Also, I should be honest here; I don’t game. The black holes of doom (Tumblr etc) take up most of my procrastinatory time. I grew up watching (primarily boys but that could have been coincidence) playing pixelated(correct?) Legend of Zelda and Mario on Nintendo sets. Then, after a ten year gap I watched a friend and her brother start “resident evil.” I was in awe. I still am; one of those “wow, technology, duuuuuuude….: things the old (over 36: HAH!) people succumb to. I ended up following this issue to the extent I have due to liking this blog and Popehat and because anyone pursuing Ministry today who says this stuff won’t be relevant to their youth group/congregation’s lives can take…well, Tam’s advice above. I hope it’s not utter de trop to say I’m adding this screed out of sadness that such a magical thing has an element that is so hard on people over gender or sexuality.
November 2nd, 2014 at 11:56 am
Um….sorry…one more. Guys, IS there anything ministers, youth group coordinators, student ministers etc can do to support/comfort or go Browncoat on misogynists like the gamer gate f**&wads? (all bias aside, I mean, I can’t dismiss my opinion of their behavior utterly)
November 2nd, 2014 at 12:00 pm
You’re right, the experience does make a difference. I have none because I’m not a gamer though I have seen some equivalent attitudes in some gun shops in the past.
In your second paragraph, last sentence, the “them” you are referring to are the idiots, not the adults, right?
I’m not sure the “we”, you’re referring to in the last paragraph (I’m assuming you’re talking about regular gamers of all sexes and ehtnicities who just want to play games and not get dragged into things) has let “them” (the idiots) define the culture for you. I get the impression, rather, that opposite sides in the “culture war” latched on to this small fight and made it bigger in order to get on their moral and political high horse and push their points about society at large across. Those sides seem to be the ones forcing you into groups and attitudes that aren’t yours (e.g. if you’re anti gamergate, you must be a SJW and are probably a mysandrist lesbian, if you are pro gamergate, you must be sexist, racist and vote republican -I hope I got the sides right). That’s my impression at least.
I don’t know what sammich jokes are. I’m guessing I probably don’t want to know.
November 2nd, 2014 at 12:59 pm
Yes, the them is the idiots, not the adults. And you’re also right about the regular gamers being “we”. Sorry, too many pronouns, not enough clarity.
And you’re absolutely right about this particular kerfuffle being a larger culture war now with a tiny nugget of gamer culture at the center- I’ve just been involved with the gamer culture wars themselves long enough to assume incorrectly that everyone knows what I’m talking about. It isn’t just the gamergaters, sadly, there’s a long history here. This is a pretty good example: the Capcom reality show debacle
November 2nd, 2014 at 2:07 pm
That was … really weird.
I’m talking about what you linked to.
November 2nd, 2014 at 6:18 pm
@LabRat
Sure, I’d love to see some links. I never did the MMO thing, so my experience obviously isn’t representative.
But people I met playing strategy/4x games were a livesaving support network for a confused teenager. Even the straight folks seemed to ‘get it’ somehow, you know?
Seeing people trash them *on my behalf* as neckbearded grognard freaks is extremely upsetting.
Would also like to hear your take on this
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/10/27/everything-personal-cant-be-political/
@Tam
Not really sure what to say but sorry for what seems to be going on.
November 2nd, 2014 at 11:00 pm
Reddit, of course
Dear god
Those are both MRA areas so raging misogyny is kind of easy to spot there, but there’s a milder version here
Pretty much all this guy has written on the subject, but this is the first “WE’RE BEING INVADED AND FIGHTING BACK” I found- oh my god the calls are coming from inside the house
And, and, and… mostly I see these arguments in comments and on forums where the slagging is already up and raging; it’s harder to link to those. But I repeat: you not having experienced it personally, especially if you inhabit a pretty narrow subsection of gaming that mostly IS populated by an older set, does not mean it doesn’t happen or is some sort of strawman. (I like 4x too, cut my teeth on Civilization when it came out.) I’ve met wonderful people gaming. That’s why I don’t like to see that hostile set setting the tone and definition for the larger culture. And make no mistake, we’ve allowed them to to a disturbing degree.
I’ll finish reading the article tomorrow- I’m for bed.
ETA: of course just now I remember this. Read to the end, it’s short: the Peacock rant- CNN
November 3rd, 2014 at 2:07 am
I’m… not going to go down that first rabbit hole this evening, but there was an interesting reaction thread to the Peacock article _here_ of all places: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/07/26/who-gets-to-be-a-geek-anyone-who-wants-to-be/
Aside from the usual “we love you Scalzi, please let us kiss your feet and curse this other guy to hell” comments, there were cosplayers who felt alienated and overshadowed by hired “adult stars”, hipster-geeks who felt like the spaces they’d built were being colonized by corporations pimping movies like Twilight, and several varieties of feminist whose conclusions ranged from “you’re not allowed to tell people what to wear/how to be geeks” to “cosplay costumes shouldn’t allowed to be sexy, because that’s exploitative”.
This kind of stuff is _complicated_, and screaming FUCK OFF AND DIE at people is only making things worse.
Now this is just a side note since I don’t really follow con news, but weren’t conventions being pressured to _ban_ professional cosplayers around that time? Or just ones in sexy outfits?
Seems like there’s a fair amount of discussion that needs to happen about issues like that, and an environment where everything is political and any discussion _instantly_ leads to political shitflinging is going to make it impossible… especially since we’re not exactly well known for being socially adept.
Just as a practical matter, if “#solidarity_is_for_white_women” style politicized infighting ever reaches guns and geekdom, we’re DEAD.
Also lmao “annoying everyone else by throwing inhalers at each other or whatever nerds do.”
November 3rd, 2014 at 8:33 am
I’ve seen this happen more and more over the years.
First it was Rebecca Watson and skeptics. Now it’s this individual.
The individual issues a statement. (Or in this case, a spurned love interest decides to slander a female)
This causes others to completely lose their shit. Because, well, actually investigating claims is hard but venting Righteous Anger(tm) is easy.
Then there is the inevitable counter volleys.
Yet none of this actually touches on the core issue described in the first state.
I am a gamer. Old school. Think Might and Magic series.
There are games that have female characters, but limiting them based on genre does not make sense. Sadly, this has degenerated straight into the old SNL skit of Point-Counterpoint.
November 3rd, 2014 at 8:36 am
Like Jennifer, it’s only very recently that I’ve gotten anywhere close to modern gaming, and I still spend a lot of time in the 8-bit/16-bit world. When GG first came up, it looked to me like a completely different animal than it evidently is now. I know not whether that is perspective or reality, but there it is. My local gaming group is a pretty diverse and inclusive bunch though. If this whole thing is a bunch of wimmin-hatin’ neck beards, that is regrettable. I usually watch the movement of SJWs as a metric of where I want nothing to do with a subject though. Sarkeesian is a troll with a “look at me” agenda, but that’s not to say that she hasn’t faced some credible threats in as much as a broken clock is right twice a day. Depression Quest sounds boring. I just want to play games with my friends and family. Stuff like this makes me question whether I ever want to extend that online.
November 3rd, 2014 at 10:33 am
Eggo: Also lmao “annoying everyone else by throwing inhalers at each other or whatever nerds do.”
If I throw my vaping mod at another geek, he’ll need a surgeon to treppan him for the resulting hematoma.
November 3rd, 2014 at 2:23 pm
Having read the article- yeah, I agree with the author. Social justice as a community (which I’m quite a bit less familiar with than gaming) has its own problems and its own tribe of reflexively with us-or-agin’ us. Hell, long before I saw the term “SJW” among conservatives or gamers, I saw it from social-justicey people using it to describe those among their midst who picked fights and hills to die on to feel self-righteous, often derailing the relevant discussion in the process.
Which does not mean the social-justice people in general never have a valid point or even several. And it makes me less inclined to go into as much detail and effort to take them apart when their actual opponents are engaging in FAR more damaging tactics with far less actual justification- and it makes it much harder to take the gamergaters seriously when they’re pointing fingers at the SJWs for being perpetually aggrieved at the same time as they’re equating being criticized with being bullied. And doxxing and organized harassment campaigns aren’t microagressions, they’re just plain aggressions. “Well both sides suck”, even if they do in their own way, rings to me as false equivalence when we’re talking about this kind of imbalance and the excuse-making for the worst of it in favor of “well let’s talk about how much SJWs suck too”. There are other hills to defend.
And if cons were being pressured to ban professional cosplayers, I never heard about it, and while I’m not near so immersed in the con world as I am in gaming, I do follow it. The last con I went to had a few pros and a lot of amateurs, and I didn’t see any resentment at all from either side- but Santa Fe is a much smaller con than, say, San Diego.
I am, however, opposed to gatekeeping in the geek community and frankly other communities, including feminism. I never use “faux feminist”, I don’t think women who are pro-life should be “kicked out” of feminism, and while I’ll certainly criticize those whose arguments I regard as wrong or hypocritical or what have you, it’s not my right or anyone else’s to declare them Not One of Us. I wrote a much longer reaction to Peacock’s article here if you’re interested. It’s just as much a reaction to his defenders, though- not all of the things I’m bashing on were in the article, though ironically several of Scalzi’s commenters provided several.
November 3rd, 2014 at 8:21 pm
From the Reddit article:
Some thoughts; A) men and women should each be allowed spaces where only one or the other is invited. B) a subject like hacking, atheism, or gaming is not a “space” in that sense. Women can obviously be interested in hacking, atheism, and/or gaming, and it is ridiculous and terrible to try to make things like that gender-specific spaces.
When I Googled “men-only” and “women-only”, the autocomplete suggestions were interesting. “Women-only” came up with a list focusing on options for women:
women-only gyms
women-only taxi service
women-only cabs fare ladies
women-only restaurants
women-only spaces
women-only’ spaces grow in india
I think these are all good things to have available. The “men-only” autocomplete suggestions have rather a different tone:
men-only’ conference on gender equality
men-only clubs legal
men-only
men-only scholarships
men-only crossword clue
men-only race for cancer charity
The top suggestions seem to be rather focused on whether a men-only space is or should be allowed.
Men should be allowed to have men-only groups, clubs, restaurants etc. same as women have women-only equivalents. Theoretically they are so allowed, practically only if they are willing to risk the cost and trouble of defending it in court. Perhaps some men subconsciously and consciously try to create men-only spaces by making them unattractive to women rather than exclusive in a stated way that leaves them open to lawsuits. That’s terrible because it’s a whole subject and culture rather than a club (and other ways). Seems to me like things like a few men-only and women-only servers would be a better answer; though again my playing is offline, so maybe that doesn’t make the sense I think it does.
November 5th, 2014 at 3:44 pm
@Egregious,
From what I can see, it’s not the people or the changes they bring as much as the ideology they bring with them.
As a parallel, when I started shooting I didn’t slam the Four Rules as oppressive social constructs or demand fewer scary black guns with more pink on them.
Even though the rules are socially constructed through hero-worship that’s typical of conservative men, and even though the whole “four skull-shaped bayonet mounts for each side of your quad rail” thing does give us an image problem in much the same way as big titties gives comics one.
There’s a difference between “joining” and “colonizing”, and there’s a certain type of person who treats every new social group they join like Hernán Cortés treated heathens. People in gaming aren’t worried about the people as much as they’re scared of being burned alive for not converting to the new folks’ religion…
@Labrat,
read the other links above, still need to read post 5967.
Can we lock all the people like that in a room with genocidal freaks like this and see what kind of society develops?
November 5th, 2014 at 6:59 pm
“Ideology” is another word for “point of view I find alien/obnoxious/disagree with”. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t obnoxious, disagreeable, or wrong- but “people that disagree with me and keep saying so might be around me doing the same stuff I like” isn’t a valid reason to try to keep someone out.
Women and feminists didn’t slam the Four Rules as oppressive social constructs when they started (already were) shooting, or “demand” pink guns… though oddly enough the gun manufactures made them and marketed them happily with the expectation they’d sell. And they did. Ask Keystone how many pink Cricketts they sold. For a short time they were as hard to find as Cabbage Patch dolls, Power Rangers, or Furbies.
There’s also nothing in gaming equivalent to the Four Rules, and most certainly nothing essential to the nature of video games in having the majority of games have square-jawed no-neck stubbled white male protagonists who spend most of their time crouching behind chest-high walls. Don’t like scary black rifles? There’s a fuckton of other options out there for you. I’m sure there’s some “SJWs” who’d still be upset about the representation of women in such games, but a massive part of the complaint from people like, say, me, is the distinct and baffling LACK of those other options. And I reiterate: we didn’t come in; we were already here. Wishing to be marketed to and being ticked off at what seem to be some ugly reasons why not is hardly a Marxist motivation.
EC- I’d be down with that.
November 10th, 2014 at 4:16 pm
@Eggo, so, in short, the real problem is that women are swarming the gaming community and ruining it by saying things like ‘hey, actually, that tits or gtfo thing is kinda sexist and offensive’ and ‘it would sure as hell be nice if all the female characters in this game weren’t semi-nude background scenery’ and ‘having the option for the player character to rape prostitutes is gross and awful’. Ideally, women would either (a) not game or at the very least (b) stfu about half-naked rape-bait women-as-background and the casual sexism in gaming because *that’s the culture*, deal with it, ladies. It’s totally the same thing as new shooters dealing with the fact that guns come in various flavors of black.
How about no, with a side of go fuck yourself.
I know gamers who are wonderful people. In fact, all of the gamers I know IRL are awesome people. Same with most of the men I know IRL, for that matter. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as sexism or that it doesn’t exist in gaming culture.
November 12th, 2014 at 12:37 am
Yes aebhel, why not take the most uncharitable interpretation of my post and strawman it up to 11.
First and most importantly, I was not talking about women in gaming. I said crazy people pushing their crazy ideology, and that’s what I meant. As a matter of fact, most of them are men, but if you need an identity label for them “San Franciscan trustafarian communications majors” seems to work pretty well.
And again, there’s a difference between criticising or promoting change, and demonizing anyone who doesn’t share your vision.
If you’re involved in science fiction at all, maybe the name Benjanun Sriduangkaew/RequiresHate is a better explanation by itself than I could write, given how nobody can talk about this issue directly without it turning into “go fuck yourself”-level insults.
November 12th, 2014 at 8:35 am
I wasn’t going to respond to the first part of what you said, but couldn’t stop thinking about the gross and ridiculous perversion of what’s actually going on.
In an era when nobody thinks it’s strange that half the KIA troops on my XCOM memorial wall are women, these neo-victorians are demanding that all female characters be made immune to damage, just like children.
Can you imagine that? “Aliens terrorize cities across the globe, sparing delicate, innocent ladies as they swoon on their fainting couches.” “Patriarchy-hating dragon turns town into raging inferno, killing all penis-holders”.
I can’t wait for the inevitable vicious infighting over when transitioning transsexual characters should become immune to damage. Since these people already happily try to destroy women’s game jams over issues like that.
And yes, I can dig into the crazy to pull up the cite for you on that one. You think we’re the ones trying to return to the dark ages here? How about no, with a side of “please do some research so you can have an informed opinion”.
If you want to accuse me of tribalism, go ahead. I’ll proudly call myself a member of tribe “opposed-to-batshit-insane-culture-warriors-crucifying-anyone-who-dares-to-question-them”.