Congratulations, assholes! You did it! Your threats and harassment have driven game journalist/designer Jenn Frank and game designer/media critic Mattie Brice to leave the gaming world.
Frank, an award-winning writer and sometime game designer, came to the attention of the misogynist mob after writing a brief opinion piece for The Guardian decrying the widespread and vicious harassment of women in gaming. In addition to writing about the harassment she’s gotten — including someone trying to hack into her email account — she (as you might expect) also highlighted the misogynistic rage directed at feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and indie game designer Zoe Quinn.
The new rule seems to be that any woman who writes about online harassment will herself be harassed, and in this case it didn’t take long.
The gamebro army, completely ignorant about how journalism works, decided that she had a “conflict of interest” — because, and I’m totally serious here, she had previously exchanged some tweets with Quinn and donated some money to her on Patreon. One critic, who put together a much-passed-around graphic outlining the charges against her, angrily denounced Frank for “vigorously defending [Quinn] while pretending to be impartial.”
There are a couple of giant problems with these accusations. First off, Frank never pretended to be impartial. She was not reporting on anything for the Guardian. She was writing an OPINION PIECE about a topic that obviously affected her. Editors don’t assign OPINION PIECES to writers who are, or who pretend to be, impartial. They assign these pieces to people WITH OPINIONS. You’re not going to get much of an OPINION PIECE from someone with no opinions.
Second of all, according to Frank (and I believe her), she had asked The Guardian to attach a brief statement to the end of her piece noting her — admittedly tenuous — connections with Quinn and Sarkeesian. The Guardian editors chose not to run it because they thought these connections were too trivial to merit a mention. They forgot that she was a woman writing about gaming, and that misogynistic assholes will seize on anything, literally anything, as an excuse for harassment.
After she started getting harassed for her alleged “conflict of interest,” Frank wrote a blog post dealing with the issue clearly and straightforwardly, and convinced the Guardian editors to append a version of her original disclosure statement to the piece:
Update: Jenn Frank has purchased and is a supporter of Zoë Quinn’s work, although this is the first article she has written on the developer. Frank has also briefly met Anita Sarkeesian.
As absurd as it is for a woman writer to have to publicly confess that she “has also briefly met Anita Sarkeesian,” as if this is some sort of crime, Frank thus answered her critics directly. And that should have been it. But of course the harassment — sorry, the perfectly legitimate criticism — continued, and on Wednesday night Frank announced that she’d had enough:
https://twitter.com/jennatar/status/507338379474649088
https://twitter.com/jennatar/status/507411937383022592
The only “conflict of interest” here was the “conflict of interest” that Frank wrote about originally in her Guardian piece. After describing her horror on discovering that someone had been trying to hack her email, she wrote:
My unabashed love for video games, my colleagues and my work have a conflict of interest with my own terror.
And, at least for now, the terror has won.
Meanwhile, game designer and media critic Mattie Brice was also extracting herself from an industry and a culture that has been grinding her down. I’ll let her tweets tell the story. (See her timeline for more.)
real talk is that people like me have been getting harassed and disregarded for a long time and patience's gone for things not being better
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 3, 2014
it feels like everyone is taking their merry ol' time to wise up and take action in a way that actually helps. don't have time for that
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 3, 2014
i need to get better and since that healing isn't coming from the outside i have to get it from the inside. shouldn't be how it is
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 3, 2014
see ya video games pic.twitter.com/0nnU6oAl7N
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 4, 2014
Congrats to all the people excising themselves from something horrible and looking to take care of yourself
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 4, 2014
If industry cared you would be properly supported. It wasn't ready for or deserving of you. Go shine elsewhere
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 4, 2014
It'll be nice not aspiring to be a part of an industry that makes me cry and hurt so often
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 4, 2014
I'm glad you all love video games a lot, these guys are tough company.
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 4, 2014
i decided i'm not spending time and energy on things that don't reciprocate. the games industry never budged to make room for me
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 5, 2014
it asked for volunteer work, it asked me to take harassment, it asked me to live in poor conditions. i won't anymore
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 5, 2014
until you figure out how to change that this industry will be a revolving door where people don't even get into the building
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 5, 2014
i won't spend any energy making you feel like your consumer products are art and deserving of critical attention
— @mattiebrice.bsky.social (@thotxcouture) September 5, 2014
Elsewhere on Twitter, the bullies crowed over their victory:
https://twitter.com/AlrightAnon/status/507395891838590976
Another day, another couple of women ground down and spat out by the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine, Gaming Division.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the gamebros haven’t forgotten about Zoe Quinn either.
lemme just check my email and- oh. #GamerGate pic.twitter.com/YJ8cwzlM79
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) September 3, 2014
Here’s the screenshot; click for a larger and more readable version — if you’re not triggered by violent threats, that is.
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Seriously, if you know, tell me, because I am fresh out of explanations for this level of blind hatred.
NOTE: This thread is a NO SHITHEAD thread. If you say anything that in any way even slightly excuses or justifies the harassment of these women, you can fuck right off to any of the eight zillion places on the internet where you can badmouth these women to your heart’s content. I and the other mods will be banning and deleting as necessary.
Meanwhile, the concern troll style gamergaters are trying to divorce the image of their ‘movement’ from harassment. It’s not working, and there’s a great piece about why:
Link.
This wouldn’t have happened to us ladygamers if we were Only A Penis. 🙁
This is so unfair and tragic… these women deserve much better. We all deserve much better.
I wish this could be taken as a message to the world, that women are getting the hell out of the gaming cesspool… but women have been leaving all kinds of jobs due to harassment and nobody raises an eyebrow.
Can’t it stop already?
Once again, the hateful treatment of women in [fill in the blank any old way you like] justifies feminism. Especially when hateful shit is directed at women trying to make a positive difference.
Wonder how these gamebros are gonna feel when their beloved boys’ club turns into a wasteland full of tumbleweeds. Because adult women are in fact the largest demographic in the industry, and if you lose them…well…
I’m sure there are people out there who can see a phrase like, “her complete unfaithfulness apparently isn’t important to her integrity because apparently feminism lets women do whatever they want. We need to punish her for this shit.” and claim with a straight face that this statement is completely aboveboard and not misogynist in the slightest.
Those people are horrible people. I hope I never see a post by one of them, because I know I will lose my shit if I do. This is not valid criticism, of anything. It’s rage that a woman exists in a place where men can see her.
There has to be a way to get the guys who’re making direct threats, right? They should at the very least be banned from any/all relevant conventions.
@Bina – do I dare to hope that this means that the bastards have, ultimately, already lost? Because I’d hate to think that a little shit like Dante was right.
Read the Zoe Quinn screenshot. Shouldn’t have read the Zoe Quinn screenshot.
“We need to punish her…”, “… give her a crippling injury”, *shudder. What the hell is wrong with these people!? Full support to Frank and Brice in their decisions to opt out. Full horror and disgust that they had to make the decision at all.
Neckbeard basement dwellers.
The problem is that the harassers are more visible and vocal than the people who oppose them but (too often) stay silent. They need to do things like this more often. (Don’t read the comments, don’t read the comments.)
Yup. seriously, what is wrong with those harrasing jerks?
Is the gaming industry attracting or CREATING such insensitive crowd by pandering to the lowest common denominator of views & childlish behaviour?
Many accuse video games of increasing violence and causing psychological harm. I’m far from such biased views, but if we take a look at the history we can see that at some point games become violent. And I mean REALLY violent. Like psycho-crazy-rapist violent. Topics got darker, more gloomy, more gory. What was niche became a required feature. Graphics got better and we can now see everything in fine detail.
I think players were strongly influenced by those changes. They saw violent and criminal behaviour presented as acceptable, as excused by artistic licence. They got used to phenomenon of being violent in the reality of a game-world. They felt ok inside.
Now some people point out that such topics, such behaviour is wrong on many levels. Gamebros cannot abide! They feel threatened, because if they admit that scenes of rape, torture and violence in games are unnecessary, if they allow feminism, humanism and equal rights in their ‘entertainment’, their will have to change as well. Their world of enjoing brutality will collapse.
They are, of course, still enormous jerks and what they do is bordering on the criminal offence. I wish they understood what they did and pitied it for the rest of their lives.
“We’re winning”
no stupid you and other cowardly misoygnists are just proving on why we need femnisism. I hope these women will be ok.
@cloudiah,
…read the comments. GAHHH!
Fortunately my Firefox doesn’t even bother loading most comment boards unless I explicitly adjust my add-on settings to permit it. No-script is the one most responsible for this. I often thank my past self for the decision to install that one.
Sickening and appalling. These asshats are going to turn a medium that has infinite potential for bringing people together and letting others experience life in another person’s shoes into a dying realm of bro-friendly shoot-em-ups as they ruin countless lives in the process.
Although I do believe that there is a majority out there that deplore this hideousness — like those 600 developers mentioned in Cloudiah’s link — I’m having a daily struggle holding up hope for this to improve. (I didn’t read the comments, because I don’t need that hope slashed down even further.)
Reading through the Twitter thread of celebrating two journalists being harassed into retirement, I see that @AlrightAnon claims that feminism is transphobic. In a latter tweet, he explained “If you don’t thonk[sic] gender roles are a natural thing, that’s transphobic”. Uh, what?
Also, @AlrightAnon says that he’s “aiming for a monarchy”. I guess he’s one of those “dark Enlightenment” people?
@SandyH Don’t trash on the neck beard. Some of us need them for cyclocross
The “we’re winning” comment really turns my stomach. I don’t understand their logic. They are actively trying to alienate women, but often these same men talk about all the things they want from women. Women are not going to give you anything if you drive them away because THEY AREN’T THERE ANY MORE!
On a lighter note, here is link to a video of some comedians taking on misogyny in video games. I think it’s encouraging to see more people talking about this. Even if they are making jokes, the message is still clear.
Content warning: NSFW language and some violent and sexualized video game clips.
http://www.nerdist.com/vepisode/ucb-presents-controller-freaks-misogyny-in-video-games/
I am really good with computers, like, REALLY, but I’ve so far in my life, dumped a computer science major (got the minor, though, that’s how late I dumped it) dumped four CS jobs, been told *at a job interview* “you have experience! and you’re a girl!,” fixed the computer of basically everyone I know at one time or another, decided to wear an apron and work retail rather than do another computer job, and still get “Wow, you type so fast! Were you a secretary or something?” *sigh* Why isn’t this getting better?
People are objecting to the 4chan quote on the grounds that Quinn is ignoring that the responses are all telling the commenter to fuck-off. However, the majority of those are doing so because they think the original comment is by Quinn herself or some other feminist…
Also, more loveliness from @AlrightAnon: he thinks going after Quinn’s partner is a good thing to do.
“Feminism lets women do whatever they want” — oh the horror! The horror that women are actually human beings who have the unmitigated gall to do things their male overlords don’t approve of! I think I’m going to be sick.
More circle jerk nonsense from basement dwellers. Big surprise. I would say a good deal of gamers are also MGTOW or the True Forced Loneliness Lunkheads you see on youtube so none of this is a surprise to me. Gamers are also obviously very SENSITIVE blokes. They are constantly whinging that there’s no such thing as games that make people violent; there’s no such thing as game addiction (while they sit there and play games 16 hours a day); there is no over sexualization of females in games (right) and on and on and on. Why don’t they just admit the truth? Because they basement dwelling anti-social nitwits…oh I mustn’t forget to add this as they do this as well: NOT ALL GAMERS ARE LIKE THAT. lol
ej,
That was a great video.
Don’t read the comments.
Argh! Yuck, new, gross, not the knees! (Also not the rest of the whole thing, not just the threats)
You know, I just can’t. I’ll be with Nivi hiding behind some grass.
http://www.feministborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/IMG_1894.jpg