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.
*an altoholic I should proofread more often.
Following on from the talk about gaming and gamers, here’s a great video by Youtuber Campster about why keeping politics, feminism, and racism out of discussions about gaming is a bad idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_tdztHiyiE
Don’t know what happened to my comment so will try again. This has nothing to do with gaming, but has anyone seen the movie Backyard, about the murdered and missing women in juarez, Mexico. It is such an eye opener, but not for the faint of heart.
Phoenician, you’ve clearly spent lots of time working out this system, but unfortunately it just doesn’t fix the fundamental problem: It still allows the majority to silence the minority and, a related problem, allows the established people to silence the new people, both of which only serve to sustain problematic entrenched behavior.
A neutral setting like this one that doesn’t give any participant special privileges over any other is better because, while it still has the initial problem of people in the community behaving badly, at least it doesn’t introduce new problems as well.
TL;DR: Your idea is worse than doing nothing.
Sorry, found my comment. Must stop the wine
This is the part, I think, that completely proves that the harassment has absolutely nothing to do with anything that Zoe Quinn has actually done.
When I argue or disagree with someone, I argue or disagree with just that person. If I’m upset enough, I may vent to a friend or two, but what I don’t do is involve the person’s friends and family in the quarrel. Or the whole internet, as in the case of the malicious ex-boyfriend.
Whatever lies these shitweasels tell themselves to rationalize their unjustified and horrible treatment of someone being Female On The Internet – Gaming Division, the fact that they’ve gone after her family and friends pretty much blows those rationalizations out of the water. This is pure, unadulterated bullying, plan and simple.
*facepalm*
This this THIS OMG SO MUCH THIS.
This post about how the whole misogynist maelstrom around Zoe Quinn is ridiculous woman-hating bullshit just made my day.
Thus Spake ZaraPhoenician in a time of Romans:
Bad behavior from the majority of self-identified “gamers” in most venues is exactly the problem we’re trying to solve. Your solution simply creates mechanics to enforce majority privilege — as katz points out, it’s worse than doing nothing.
It’s also worth pointing out culture becomes self-perpetuating. For example, I’m a poster at RPG.net, a forum devoted to tabletop roleplaying games and gaming in general. The moderators come down HARD on racism, homophobia, misgendering of transpeople, and a lot of other issues. (A personal favorite: “But what about TEH MENZ?!” thread derailing is explicitly prohibited.) The result is a generally decent forum culture; it’s not always perfect, but the worst posters either get banned or cry “SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORING!!” and rage-quit. (And good riddance.)
On the other hand, there are other roleplaying-related sites where the moderation is lighter or absent, and most of them are truly wretched. Again, culture perpetuates itself: If misogynist, homophobic, racist, and transphobic language goes unpunished, it doesn’t take long before it’s seen as normative and acceptable. People who don’t want to deal with that crud simply go elsewhere, while the nasty forum culture attracts like-minded people and grows even nastier. Soon rants about fake geek girls and How The Feminazi Agenda ROOOONED The Hobbit Movies are commonplace, and the end result is a shitpit like… well… I could name names but I don’t want to give them the traffic. 😉
Phoenician, you’ve clearly spent lots of time working out this system
Nope – like I said, off the top of my head.
It still allows the majority to silence the minority and, a related problem, allows the established people to silence the new people, both of which only serve to sustain problematic entrenched behavior.
Remind us again what you’re presenting as an alternative to solve the problem of bad behavior by a significant number in a gaming environment. Not doing anything? Setting up gatekeepers to enforce their stance on everyone?
Well, what they’re doing at RPG.net seems to be working rather well. I’ve never posted there but Pocket Nerd has vouched for it being cool.
Aaaand Phoenician is apparently going to make the karma system he claims he just thought of off the top of his head his hill to die on.
The irony is that if we had his karma system, I could shut him up.
Belated thanks for banning those two jerks, David. I got sort of upset at the “I’m not saying that the harassment is okay but wait yes I am” bullshit they were pulling.
Regarding Jim Sterling: I actually found his videos fairly recently by coincidence, and loved his take on objectification in video games, and his takedown of the ridiculous “argument” that men get objectified in video games, too (they don’t).
It was only by his own admission that I later found out that he had been a grand asshole in the past, and that he deeply regrets the stuff he made back then. These days, he’s made several videos on the subject of inclusivity, and highlighted many problems with sexism in the gaming community. The change of heart seems so utterly staggering that I had trouble believing it at first.
That would be this?
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?619194-RPG-net-Rules-and-Guidelines&p=15188000#post15188000
Yes, that’s a good example of a curated space – specifically “The site owners entrust management of the forum community to a volunteer staff of moderators”.
Which works if you’re aligned with the curators, and they have the ability to act effectively. It’s a bit easier to moderate a forum than a MMO in progress.
@Anarchonist- Yeah. I would often worry if the person would turn out to be another Hugo Schwyzer. Ick. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Again.
@phoenician, granted, yes. MMOs are extremely difficult to moderate. I suppose you could always go down the route of giving people the ability to personalize their settings. You can do that in WoW. Turn off certain chats. Block people. Ignore people. It’s not perfect but I don’t currently have any other solutions.
PSA: drop us a line at the mods if any other trolls come a-calling. I’m not really following this one now it’s talking about gaming more broadly (not my subject at all).
🙂
katz: Aaaand Phoenician is apparently going to make the karma system he claims he just thought of
“Claims he just thought of”?
Hey, katz, since you’re now in the business of reading minds, where did i leave my car keys?
kittehserf: I left a gingery kitty for anyone who wants kitties on the previous page. So, there’s that at least. 😛
@redpoppy
I’ll ask David to pass along my contact details to you.
But I do have one very important question…. alliance or horde?
Phoenician, dude, if you did just think of that karma system, your adamant defense of how perfect it is just becomes sadder and more obnoxious. Stop acting like you know everything.
Kim, my answer is going to be disappointing….both. 😛 But my most geared toon is my 90 Belf priest.
In other words, I’m usually Horde because my husband is and we game together. But I go Ally whenever I need to play my draenei ladies. I just love them so much even though as a faction I prefer the Horde.
That’s funny. My mains are horde, and I prefer horde as a faction too (except Garrosh – what is his deal?! Seriously. Since you’re into the lore maybe you know), but almost all my alts on other servers are alliance. And Draenei ladies are my faves too, other than my main main – a male Tauren warrior tank. I’ll always have a soft spot for him. 🙂
Kim- Looks like we have similar tastes! Yay! Garrosh is a prick. But there really isn’t anything “up” with him. Unlike other villains who may have had outside influence, Garrosh is just an asshole. I mean, his history does play a part. But he’s doing this because he wants to not because he’s being controlled or persuaded. He’s just a dick. lol