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.
Holy shit.
My first reaction? I’d jail every one of the scum doing this to her and her friends and family.
For life. No internet access.
Between this and the heavy discussion about Christy Mack, I am 1 million % sick of asshole abusers and the dudebro defenders that salivate over seeing a woman brutally abused for, at most, a minor personal issue.
This needs to be prosecuted, although I sadly doubt it ever will.
Pocket Nerd: I’m trying to think of more and better ways to push back against the hate and xenophobia. (Beyond the obvious, such as not silently pretending it’s cool when people I’m playing with act like bigots.) Any ideas?
“Circle of trust” collectives for playing games – act like an asshole, and you get booted (permanently/temporarily) from gaming interaction with a critical mass of people.
There is the problem that this could be hijacked by, say, evangelical Christians or rabidly PC SJW types to enforce their particular type of groupthink, but if there are alternative gaming communities, this isn’t a serious problem. I’m thinking along the lines of servers or instances based on ideological barriers, with organic user policing.
Maybe even adding a simple +/- button to vote on other users – get enough of them, and you get booted for a while, and the more times you vote the lower your voice counts – those who try to abuse it will (without telling them) not be counted.
I saw a comment on an unrelated page about this last night. I thought it was just by some misogynist being a regular asshole, I didn’t think it would actually be a part of a coordinated effort by an ex-boyfriend. It is here is you want to see it, http://www.reddit.com/r/nerdcubed/comments/2e0jpf/nerd%C2%B3s_hell_tank_simulator/cjv4624
Thus Spake ZaraPhoenician in a time of Romans:
This sounds like a phenomenal way to enforce majoritarian rule — if 80% of a game’s players think it’s just fine and dandy to make rape jokes about your opponents, it’ll be the 20% who dissent who will be voted down and silenced.
(And it’s possible I am one of those “rabidly PC SJW types” you mention above, since “social justice warrior” in practice seems to mean “a person who wants more equality than the speaker does.”)
You’re also talking about a structural change; I’m looking for more I personally can do, beyond saying “That isn’t cool” to people who are racist, misogynist, homophobic, or transphobic, and declining to play with those who persist.
@WindRider
A bit late in the thread, but I think it’s also worth noting that the Escapist is NOT a good website for any discussion, period. The userbase has way too many victim blaming dipshits that loudly derail every thread about gender with typical denialist bullshit and whine endlessly about straw-Tumblr “SJWs”. It’s one of those sites where it is technically not MRA, but too many members are sympathetic to the general ideas and “debate” tactics without being run out of town to excuse it. (Also, the “relationship” forum is full of Nice Guy™ “friendzone” bullshit.)
What’s sad is that two of the big three contributors (Jim Sterling and Moviebob) are, more or less, on our side (if not perfect). Sadly, their “headliner”, Yahtzee, is pretty much the role model that empowers the dipshits; just watch his YouTube channel where he, also, blames straw “SJWs” for, well, vaguely existing as a way to insinuate every feminist discussion is bullshit (along with rampant use of hateful language that crossed the “ironic asshole” threshold a long, long time ago).
This sounds like a phenomenal way to enforce majoritarian rule — if 80% of a game’s players think it’s just fine and dandy to make rape jokes about your opponents, it’ll be the 20% who dissent who will be voted down and silenced.
If 80% of the players think that, no mechanism would ever work, nor would any ever be implemented.
I’m betting the assholes are a small, vocal minority.
And it’s possible I am one of those “rabidly PC SJW types” you mention above
And if you’re obnoxious enough about it online, you might get voted out for a while – by the other players. And if you’re not, you won’t.
I was just coming up with something off the top of my head that would avoid “gatekeepers” – whether they be you, Dudebro McRapejoke, or even massively advanced and incredibly objective superior intelligences such as myself.
Ken,
I know you don;t mean anything by it. This is like the guy who was trying to explain how rough it is to be a guy to us in another thread earlier that was about men comparing their fear of laughter to women’s fear of murder. He was just say’n and he didn’t mean any harm. But good intentions lead bad places sometimes.
I had the ever loving shit kicked out of me in my school days. Like, eye swollen shut, lip split, black and blue kind of shit kicked out of me. I never had one teacher ask me if I was OK. My parents were furious with me, because girls should never get in fights. (Nevermind that getting jumped is not getting in a fight. It was somehow my fault.) I was threatened regularly. I had nasty, nasty rumors spread about me. I also got sexually harassed daily from the time I grew tits (10) and much, much more. School was a nightmare and I’m lucky to have survived it. I almost didn’t.
I bet there are so many other women and girls who have similar stories to tell and worse. So why is it when men direct hatred at women, it is the men whose supposed hardships with bullies and their social awkwardness that get brought up? Why is that something we should consider over and over again?
I don’t like it and I wish it would stop. I especially wish it would stop coming from allies. I may be wrong to feel this way, but it irritates me.
You’re not wrong to feel that way. If men can’t stop and think about whether what they’re about to say is relevant, appropriate, or even reasonable, then from a feminist perspective they’re not being very good allies.
I think the problems with gaming (and geek) culture are put best in the article “The nightmare is over: They’re not coming for your games”. The short version: a lot of gamers (and geeks) have this shared delusion that the eviiiiiil outsiders will take away their games, so they react the same to everybody criticizing them, from actual anti-game politicians all the way down to somebody criticizing a problematic social element. Their reaction: childish temper tantrums.
Oh please, your pain isn’t important. You’re female! Clearly, whatever traversities you go through is just sad, terrible bagage some unlucky man will have to gently talk you through before you can be his ever loving faithful thing! Your history just happily highlights his caring empathic nature.
…
…
Yeeeeeeaaah. <_<
I mostly play single player computer games, so I haven’t had to deal with misogyny online, but I did play a tabletop in college that’s a lot like D&D called BESM. It’s anime-based, so there’s another layer of misogyny built right in there already, and my so-called friends would claim that my character was being “bitchy” and was “one her period” all the time as a joke. I was humiliated enough when that happened, but when I was talking to them about real-world issues that I wanted to talk to them about, these guys would totally dismiss what I was saying because “you won’t sleep with me”. Literally. It was mortifying, and they wondered why I didn’t want to play the game anymore after that. Or hang out with them.
I just can’t imagine how much worse it is for someone like Zoe, who’s got her name out there in public and is getting all this harrassment. It’s bad enough when the people you’re playing a game with claim that you were teasing and leading them on for a whole two years just for existing in close proximity to them, but when she’s this exposed… She definitely got my support.
I bet there are so many other women and girls who have similar stories to tell and worse. So why is it when men direct hatred at women, it is the men whose supposed hardships with bullies and their social awkwardness that get brought up? Why is that something we should consider over and over again?
Because there are two ways that can affect you:
i, You can develop a sense of empathy and, um, siblinghood for those who also face hardships and social stigma OR
ii, You can nurse your hurt and resentment as justification for your own bullying.
The men bringing up these hardships are the latter. They hurt, therefore they have a right to make other people hurt if they feel justified – and, by God, an uppity women threatening their gaming justifies it in their minds.
Of course it isn’t. It sells itself as the “highbrow” of gaming sites, which means it attracts a lot of assholes who think too highly of their own intelligence.
This is so horrifying I don’t have words.
Well, except these: I’ve been meaning to play depression quest for ages now. Today seem like a good day to start.
Wait… Jim Sterling is now being pointed to as one of the “good ones” on sexism. Maybe he’s recently had a change of heart, but I remember his stuff being violently anti-women and full of anti-feminist conspiracy theories straight from the heart of MRA land. Did things get so bad that even he doesn’t want to be in the same room as the rape-threating harassing dipshits anymore?
That’s… terrifyingly impressive.
Alex M-
I was at that panel. And yeah, that is sort of the biggest dark cloud hanging over the games industry at the moment. A bunch of Penny Arcade style man-children, still scared that mommy is going to take their copy of Mortal Kombat away from them because the mean man on the TV said it was bad. All of whom seem to have forgotten that nearly ever fucker on the planet plays video games of some form or has fond memories of having played video games at some point in time and video games has left its brief moment in the scope of being blamed for all of society’s problems as the “thing that is ruining America’s youth” du jour. And who have forgotten that the only people trying to attack games that exist and discount them are toxic masculinity insecure “hardcore gamers” who think the fact that they gravitate towards the type of samey military shooter that is easy to play in a weekend for a quick review show is the be-all end-all of the medium and should be so for all time or until a critical mass of women play it and then some other genre will be the “one true genre” (sports games?).
Fuck, as someone who likes video games as a medium for art and storytelling, it is incredibly frustrating to constantly watch this band of sexists, so desperate to close off something as a special he-man woman-hater’s club of “real gaming” or “real geekery” that it has been discounting more and more of the medium and doing real harm to the diversity of games and products put out (oversaturation of military shooters, DC comics turn to the douchebro). For no other reason than that women happen to enjoy it too (which is why simulation games, JRPGs, puzzle games, etc… have all been discounted as not real gaming and why things like anime have been designated not real geekery with an accompanying loss of presence in the market and in conferences).
We’ll be so much better off when this band of twitchy nervous assholes still worried about their relative dick size moves the fuck on to something else to defend with all the hateful yearning for a time that never was that characterizes other fucked up situations like the toxic sports fandom culture in America.
Weird how I’ve never read articles dedicated to informing us about male game industry people who cheat on their partners in order to underscore a perceived fatal character flaw. Dudebros can never get enough of their favorite game, slut-shaming.
Popping in just to say I lurked on Game Discussion for a bit, but eventually stopped after well-meaning threads such as “Ladies! What’s a female power fantasy? What do you find attractive in a male character?” were mostly made up of male users speculating about the answer.
I don’t remember much, but a female user did call them out on such weirdness. I laughed.
It’s amazing how many guys don’t seem to be able to get beyond the “No Grils Allowed” stage. And then they blame women because they can’t seem to get laid. Just sayin’, there might be a connection there.
So…these guys are slut-shaming a female developer with depression over a game that’s currently free?
Just when I thought that the trailer-park sewage dump of the Internets couldn’t get any shittier, it up and does.
And now I need to look up that game and pray my old computer is up to the challenge.
@cerberustheasexual: Actually, Jim Sterling has had a huge change of heart in recent years, to the point where he is massively embarrassed by a lot of his old stuff (which he openly admits was hugely misogynistic) and now honestly identifies as a feminist. He has really changed for the better. His story does give me some small hope for change in that fetid community.
@Bina: It is an almost entirely text-based game that is played on a collection of HTML files. If you can browse the internet, you should be fine. XD
BreakfastMan-
Huh, guess I need to check out his stuff then.
Since we’re discussing ways of cleaning up gaming environments and potentially self-policing communities, I was wondering if people here have read about or interacted with the Tribunal for league of legends. If so, how do people feel about it. Does it work? Would something similar work elsewhere? What would need to change in the implementation?
I’ve noticed a lack of objectivity in Brandon. He keeps saying that Ms. Quinn “bribed” journalists with sex, when actually it was the journalists taking advantage of her healthy human libido to get exclusive scoops that they then neglected to write about. Each of these positions make as much sense and as little sense as the other, yet Brandon focuses in exclusively on one position without even considering that that position has a symmetrical opposite that highlights how ridiculous it is.