Sometimes it seems like the internet, or at least huge portions of it, is essentially a giant harassment machine, directed primarily at women.
This week, the target of the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine is game developer Zoe Quinn. Quinn, best known as the creator of the text-based Depression Quest, faced down two previous waves of harassment from gamer dudes who were angry about her game, for some gamer-dude reasons I can’t claim to understand, and who grew even angrier after Quinn spoke publicly about being harassed.
Her harassers claimed that she was lying about being harassed previously, and apparently figured there was no better way to prove that she hadn’t been harassed in the first place than by harassing her about her claims of harassment. I’m sorry if that’s confusing, but the “logic” of internet assholes tends to be a bit circular.
The latest wave of harassment is on a whole new level of viciousness. Because this time her haters have what they see as proof that she is indeed the evil [insert favorite anti-woman slur] that they’ve always claimed her to be. Their alleged smoking gun consists of a series of excruciatingly detailed blog posts by a vengeful ex-boyfriend describing how she allegedly cheated on him and lied about it; at roughly 10,000 words in all, not counting all the screenshots of online conversations presented as proof of his claims, his story is nearly the length of a novella.
You might ask: why is any of this any of our business? It’s fucking not. Some have tried to claim this is about “ethics,” accusing Quinn of trading sexual favors for a positive game review. But the journalist she allegedly slept with never actually wrote a review of her game.
Of course this has nothing to do with any real ethical concerns on the part of her attackers. As Quinn has pointed out herself, the people who are gleefully sharing her personal information, posting nude pictures of her, sending her threats, and otherwise trying to destroy her life don’t have any fucking ethics.
No, this is just another excuse to go after an outspoken woman on the internet, and a chance for misogynistic gamer dudes to score a symbolic victory against any and all women who are trying to enter what these guys want to see as a clubhouse where girls aren’t allowed. Anita Sarkeesian has been dealing with the same sort of shit ever since she first set out to examine sexism in the gaming world.
I honestly don’t have the psychic energy to collect together examples of the horrible shit people are saying about her; just type her name into Google along with your favorite anti-woman slur and you’ll have more proof than you need. Or go to Reddit and make your way to any of the numerous subreddits devoted to gaming and/or misogyny, where many people will be thrilled to tell you all about how “the video game industry is being fucked over because of these women.” (Actual quote.)
Quinn has said all I think she needs to say about this in an eloquent blog post of her own. Here’s a portion of it:
I am not going to link to, or address anything having to do with the validity of the specific claims made by an angry ex-boyfriend with an axe to grind and a desire to use 4chan as his own personal army. This is not a “she-said” to his “he-said”. The idea that I am required to debunk a manifesto of my sexual past written by an openly malicious ex-boyfriend in order to continue participating in this industry is horrifying, and I won’t do it. It’s a personal matter that never should have been made public, and I don’t want to delve into personal shit, mine or anyone else’s, while saying that people’s love and sex lives are no one’s business. I’m not going to talk about it. I will never talk about it. It is not your goddamned business.
What I *am* going to say is that the proliferation of nude pictures of me, death threats, vandalization, doxxing of my trans friends for having the audacity to converse with me publicly, harassment of friends and family and my friends’ family in addition to TOTALLY UNRELATED PEOPLE, sending my home address around, rape threats, memes about me being a whore, pressures to kill myself, slurs of every variety, fucking debates over what my genitals smell like, vultures trying to make money off of youtube videos about it, all of these things are inexcusable and will continue to happen to women until this culture changes. I’m certainly not the first. I wish I could be the last.
Because I’ve had a small degree of success in a specific subculture, every aspect of my life is suddenly a matter of public concern. Suddenly it’s acceptable to share pictures of my breasts on social media to threaten and punish me. Suddenly I don’t have any right to privacy or basic dignity. Suddenly I don’t get to live out normal parts of life, like going through a bad and ugly breakup in private. I have forfeited this by being a blip in a small community, while those who delight in assailing me hide behind their keyboards and a culture that permits it, beyond reproach.
My life and my body are not public property. No one’s life and body are public property.
Sexuality is one of the most personal, hurtful, and easy things to demonize a woman over, and also has nothing to do with my games. Yet large swaths of the gaming community are either unable or unwilling to separate the two. I’m convinced that my ex chose 4chan as the staging ground for his campaign of harassment and character assassination because he knew this; he knew that someone claiming to be “from the Internet” has shown up at my house once already, and he is counting on the most reviled hubs of our community to live up to their sordid reputations. This is another example of gendered violence, whereby my personal life becomes a means to punish my professional credentials and to try to shame me into giving up my work. I’m still committed to doing my small part to create a world where no woman is at risk of experiencing this.
I don’t have anything to add.
This is a NO TROLLS, NO MRAS thread. Anyone posting any doxxing shit in the comments below, or adding to the harassment against her in any way, will be banned.
Feminist? Egalitarian? You’re doing it wrong.
The reason we take a dim view of egalitarians is that they ignore societal structures that privilege one group and marginalize another. Patriarchy can hurt individual men. That’s true. But it also benefits men as a group. It makes you a privileged class.
This ignoring that some groups are privileged inevitably leads to bigotry – in your case, misogyny – on the part of the “egalitarian.” Exhibit A: Your lengthy post in which you come up with every excuse in the book for why gendered harassment is OK. It isn’t OK and this kind of gendered harassment has the effect of making every woman on the internet feel less safe. If that doesn’t matter to you, you are a complete asshole. And a misogynist of course.
(Last St Andrean post from me, promise!)
You probably had an easier graduation from me. Ancient History were the first class, and with people not attending, I was the first person up in the ceremony. So I got the full speech before being whapped with the Ancient Trousers (rm) 🙂
*sigh* Forgive me, Mammotheers, for I have commited these typos since my last confession….
I’m a feminist and a gamer, and I’ve had some bad experiences within the community…
For a while I played a board game called Mage Wars. I really like the mechanics, but the sexism on some of the cards bothered me a lot, and it just increased with every new set they put out. Every female mage is hyper-sexualized (the Priestess wears a belly shirt, Druid is completely naked [except for some vines covering her breasts and pubic region], the female versions of the Beastmaster and Warlock both wear…shall we say ridiculous armour, and the “best dressed” one of all, the Forcemaster, wears a corset and high-heeled boots) as is every explicitly female creature.
Here is the Priest: http://fathergeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/magwars_kuman_priest.jpg
And here is the Priestess: http://magewars.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/7/6/21761652/7224830_orig.jpg
When I brought up the issue on their forums, a few people agreed. However, most of the people responded with something along the lines of, “I don’t see why this is such a big deal, it doesn’t bother me so it’s clearly not offensive”, or, “but I LIKE looking at half-naked females when I play games…don’t my feelings matter!?!?!?!?!”.
One person in particular attacked me, calling me a “white knight” (apparently he didn’t notice that I wasn’t a dude), feminazi SJW who wanted to ruin everyone’s fun. He would lash out at me on any thread I commented on for MONTHS, often getting other people to join in too. The game owners/moderators responded to this by making him a playtester…I don’t play Mage Wars anymore. Ugh.
I also played DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) for a while. The guild I was in was small, and eventually I became an officer. Anyone who wanted to join had to submit an application, which was voted on by the officers. One applicant, in his application, stated that he liked to play female characters because he liked to look at their asses, and his application was full of rape jokes. Obviously, I voted no, but I was overruled by the other officers (there was me and one other woman, the rest were all men). After about a week he started hitting on me and making obscene comments to me whenever we were online together. I got sick of it and threw him out of the guild after 2 weeks of that garbage. This time all the officers agreed with me except for one, who threw a huge collasal fit that destroyed the guild. He’d registered the domain name for our forum, and his response was to kick every non-officer out of the guild and then shut down the forums. Afterwards people accused me of breaking the guild by being “too PC”.
I’ve had some good experiences too, so I know not all gaming groups are awful. I still live near the college I attended, and I still regularly attend the board game group there on weekends. While it is a pretty good group though, I’m the only woman who regularly attends. =
My name is Jake, I’m defo a feminist (wink) and defo believe in equality (wink) its just that a woman has had sex, possibly multiple times!!! and a man has complaints about her which must be 100% true because it’s a man saying it, and also people apparently like the game but it was made by a feeeeeemale so it can’t really be any good and feemales have never liked games its just a feminist conspiracy to make those sweet sweet misogyny bucks because actually men invented computers and now filthy womens want to come along. Ew how I hate them.
I make a pretty god troll, sorry, egalitarian.
Yeah…scrolled up, saw Jake’s cornucopia of tl;dr, and said “yup, troll in total diarrhea-mouthed denial”.
Also, I haven’t posted much on this one because this kind of MRA abuse just makes me want to HULK SMASH, and I doubt that really helps much. ????
“Egalitarian” in this context seems to mean “I’m more comfortable pretending privilege doesn’t exist, so please don’t talk to me about it.”
Would I be insane for suggesting a WeHuntedTheMammoth Steam group? There seem to be more gamers here than I originally thought. (And Steam’s player base is drenched with dudebroness, so maybe a group for us eeeevil feminazi oppressors-of-all-things-male would be refreshing change.)
@Pocket Nerd
That sounds fine with me.
Great idea, Pocket Nerd. My steam name is the same as my name on here, I’d be happy to play some Borderlands 2 or Wanderlust:Rebirth with you guys.
Fynik is mine.
@Pocket Nerd I’m on Steam too. Having discovered the joys of Guild Wars 2 again, I won’t be on Steam as often as I was before.
I’m magenta and I have an image with feathers on my head.
Okay, group created: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/WHTM
To prevent spamming, I can’t directly invite anybody not on my friends list, but it’s a publicly-accessible group — you should be able to simply join. I’ll also start appointing group moderators from regulars here.
David, do you mind if I use some art from wehuntedthemammoth.com for the Steam group?
I make a pretty god troll, sorry, egalitarian.
All hail the God Troll!
Now I’m wondering what the Pretty God Troll would look like, and if it would be human or feline.
Sounds like a NIN album title.
Thus Spake cassandrakitty:
That’s what I was thinking… maybe after Trent Reznor had a really weird weekend of watching My Little Pony while on a mescaline bender.
Hehehe. I wish my Photoshop skills were good enough to chop that together quickly.
@Jake
“(it would be impossible to have multiple people logged into her tumblr account at once, which the posts made it appear to be)”
Actually, Tumblr has a post-by-email “feature” that lets users post without logging in. Each account has a randomly-generated email address that you can email your posts to to have them go up on the blog. Someone leaked that address, allowing multiple people to spam her blog.
“Would I be insane for suggesting a WeHuntedTheMammoth Steam group? There seem to be more gamers here than I originally thought.”
Send me an invite to it. Search for “The Melissiah”, should be easy to find me 🙂
I’d be up for joining a steam group. Mine is “kirbywarp123,” notably not “kirbywarp” (I think I made a steam account then forgot the password or something). I’m not exactly on very often, but I could be if a thing was going on.
With the Steam group, is there a way to make it so not just anybody can join? I wouldn’t put it past the trolls to try and even ruin that. :/
*spews coffee*