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.
@ Aerosol :
Say there are several hundred people on the internet talking about committing violence against you. People you have never met, who could be anywhere and attack you at any time.
…Note that the penalty for under-reacting to this undefined threat could be death or permanent injury.
Which threats of violence to your person do you choose to take seriously, and which do you choose to dismiss?
Somehow, I don’t think that any #GamerGate hashtaggers have found any violent threats posted by Zoe Quinn that they can “cherry pick.” But hey, Aeroslap, if you want to keep falsely equating Zoe Quinn with her harassers, go right ahead. Not to mention that threat sounded pretty damn serious to me. At the very, very least it seems to be meant to ensure that Zoe Quinn retreats from the gaming world out of fear.
Anytime you say an uncontroversial thing, and then append another phrase via the conjunction “but,” you are saying something stupid and you KNOW you’re saying something stupid, because you knew you needed to first qualify it with the uncontroversial statement.
I continue to await #GamerGate’s solution for the journalistic capture problem. Thus far all I’ve seen is harassment of a couple of individual women. That doesn’t solve the problem that allegedly has #GamerGaters’ panties in a bundle, or even come close to addressing it, so either #GamerGate is criminally incompetent or else journalistic capture is not, and never was, the target.
PoM, I think that when you’re dealing with trolls, you can skim their posts, ignoring everything that they write until you hit a negation word like “but.” Up until that, they’re just bullshitting.
^TRUTH @Alais
@Alais
Oh, I know, but I’m trying to read some difficult material and I have to keep taking a break to mull it over. It’s not like a troll takes up brainpower or anything.
Because only those in favour of #GamerGate and #NotYourShield are men. You sure have this pegged, David.
RE: aerosolsp
But conflicts of interest should be dealt with accordingly as well.
WHAT CONFLICTS OF INTEREST? The dude never reviewed her game positively! He mentioned it in a list of a bunch of other games! How is the mass amount of harassment this woman getting somehow comparable?
I don’t follow this stuff that closely.
You also don’t cite any proof. So shut up until you have something useful to say.
RE: pitchguest
Because only those in favour of #GamerGate and #NotYourShield are men.
Yes, that’s totally what David’s saying. All women are perfect and good and on the side of right, and all men are evil and terrible. That’s totally exactly what all this shit is saying.
But please, continue with your irrelevant prattle.
pitchguest:
I actually highly doubt that, as both men and women are capable of being assholes. It’s pretty much completely irrelevant, anyway. Saying that there are women involved doesn’t actually ameliorate the whole “total assholery” thing.
sparky
Saying that there are women involved doesn’t actually ameliorate the whole “total assholery” thing.
I think it ameliorates David’s tags.
I’m sorry, I meant to say invalidate.
Pitchguest, maybe go peddle your bullshit somewhere where they think women can’t commit misogyny, because it ain’t gonna fly here. We’ve met Janet Bloomfield.
pitchguest: Is that is relevant how…?
Pitchguest is a perfect example of the phenomenon where attempting to actually talk to one of these guys just results in confusion, because they come into the conversation with so many weird assumptions that they’re basically talking to themselves.
I hope there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and these women return. Don’t these women realize that if they run off the inferiors win? STAY ON LADIES STAY STRONG! For too long, women have backed down. Are women not Shakti? No, we must encourage these women to return!
We need to contact these women, DEMAND THEY DON’T BACK DOWN!
@Julie Salvatore
These women are doing this to escape the harassment. Demanding that they stay is demanding that they continue being harassed, and I hardly think that’s a fair thing to ask of them.
No. I will not put the onus of stopping harassment onto the victims of harassment. Why would you?
You need to settle down. How about we work to make the environment a safer one to return to, rather than demand people put themselves back in harms way, the same harm that they decided was too much? How about offering sympathy and support rather than selfishly demanding people go back into the same environment they decided to leave?
4chan has poisoned everything; now any time there’s a suspect new person commenting, I’m gonna be wondering in the back of my mind “is this a 4channer come to try to stir things up?”
Wasn’t pitchguest modded or banned?
*Threadrupt*
I saw Pitchguest’s name. In case it hasn’t been said, that’s another misogynist troll that got booted from Pharyngula.
Pitch is a blatant liar and very, very boring.
Get back to your pit with the rest of the slime, Pitch. Do not subject the nice people here to your dunderheaded sexist assholery.
Mods, I highly recommend a ban. He’s been actively misogynistic wherever he is allowed online for years now.
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