In a series of brilliant, furious Tweets, Zoe Quinn tears apart the myth that #GamerGate has "moved beyond" harassment of women

The measure of whether a person is “decent,” “good,” or even “not bad” is how they treat those with (perceived) lesser power. I’m not a Christian, but the New Testament has some wisdom here: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” Yes, even terrible people are capable of being nice and displaying love. That doesn’t make them suddenly not terrible people, because their niceness and love is reserved for certain circles. Genuinely nice people are nice to everyone, not merely their friends.

This reminds me of the responses I got on twitter from #GG dudes while I was covering Eron Gjoni’s legal troubles on my blog. (http://idledillettante.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/eron-gjonis-restraining-order-inability-to-stop-discussing-his-ex-online/)

Like, for example; I mistakenly thought “Zoe Quinn” was her real name, so I thought Eron’s lawyer was lying when he said “Quinn’s full name never appears in thezoepost.”

Gjoni wrote me back on Twitter to say ZQ wasn’t her real name; so the lawyer was just doing standard twisty-lawyer stuff (and Gjoni’s a manipulator too; which is why I was writing about him.)

And then, some nameless #GGer anon tweeted me to say I was “re-revealing” the fakeness of ZQ’s preferred name, so if I really cared about ZQ I would stop writing about Gjoni and #GG. But I hadn’t “revealed” anything (much less *re-revealed*)… I didn’t actually *know* her name was not Zoe Quinn when I published. That was all after-the-fact Eron, talking about his ex like he had been specifically told not to be doing by a court of law. But according to that #GG guy, it’s my fault for daring to criticize Gjoni in a blog post.

In related news: The Escapist, a site that allowed a gigantic slut shaming thread about Zoe Quinn in the middle of her harassment and continues to allow barely-moderated GamerGate threads coordinating attacks, published a piece called “What Male Game Developers Think of #GamerGate” (bolded word only added hours later and still doesn’t show up on the front page). The article is a fucking travesty and the people responsible need be taken to task for it.

It was mostly sourced from 4chan and other pro-GG circles while being presented as if it represents the video game development community as a whole. They could have gotten actual veterans like Tim Schafer, but instead chose to talk to such luminaries “Xbro” specifically because they slanted it in GamerGate’s favor. It uses hideously leading questions that would get a journalism major’s college application shredded. Several of the subjects are known misogynists, MRAs, doxxers, and hackers, most of whom use the interview to spread deliberate misinformation and some even designate targets on the Escapist itself. Many of the interviews are longer than the entirety of their piece “Female Game Developers Share Their Views on #GamerGate” (which is an illuminating; 6 out of 7 women reached for comment are fucking terrified for their lives, yet The Escapist decided to give twenty times more ink to their abusers).

Here’s a Storify for more information.

LBT, glad to see you! I hope the bad things will be manageable. You are tough.

1) Am I right in the impression (admittedly, from one blog) that a large part of Gamergate is driven by Mens’ Righters either just claiming to care about games (like Hoff Sommers, who is funnily enough exactly as clueless about games as the whiners claim Sarkeesian to be) or being both?

Almost. The dyed-in-the-wool MRAs latched onto the movement because it agrees with their goals (attacking women), but the founders were garden-variety misogynists, the kind you can find anywhere.

@LBT, great news on the con. I think I remember a post a while ago when you were wondering if you should go or not, glad y’all had a good time 🙂

Yes, even terrible people are capable of being nice and displaying love. That doesn’t make them suddenly not terrible people

Yes and yes. I remember reading a post on Bancroft’s blog a while back cautioning against the ‘benefit of the doubt’ thinking often fallen into when trying to assess someone’s behavioural history – “well, they did a mountain of terrible, BUT they did do this one good thing, so they can’t be so bad”. Rather than “well, they did a mountain of terrible, and ONLY this one good thing, so they must be quite bad”.

People who threaten to rape and kill are the last people who should talk about “integrity.”

The entitlement is crystal clear in what these guys say. And besides, of all things for GamerGate to be fighting/harassing/threatening for. Video games? Those electronic toys? And at least one fellow takes time out of his routine schedule to put in a weekly harassing call to this stranger? They really do have no life.

I don’t have a Twitter account and am almost never logged in to Facebook, but I realize Quinn’s call to not be silent is directed toward people like me.

My rage grows more and more with every male “gamer” commenting things like “I didn’t read anything but…” and then something about ethics in journalism. I see it on the comments of articles every day.

We all know “GamerGate” has nothing to do with either ethics nor journalism. There’s no excuse (not even the “I didn’t read anything but”).

Anyone claming to support “GamerGate” is confessing their misogyny.

Hey, Bernardo, welcome aboard. I’m Canadian, of German descent (immigrant folks). I’d love to hear more about these Menz Rightzers from over there (and yes, they probably ARE copycats of their anglo-amurrican bros, too — I can’t see them coming up with this shit independently. Being a misogynist doesn’t really predispose one to a whole lot of original thinking, as it’s the oldest and commonest bigotry in the world.)

BTW, I’m also fluent in German (English is my SECOND language, even though I was born here), so if there’s any questions about that, feel free to ask me.

Since vaiyt has already answered your first question, I’ll take on this one:

2) What would you recommend as a good tactic to a) uncover these guys’ real driving ideology and b) refute their “arguments” without exhausting oneself and feeling slightly dirty?

Keep reading this site, for starters; it’s a good resource (and a brain-refresher, too, when it gets to be too much; someone’s always posting cute kitties and other mind-bleach). You’ll get a good feel for their basic premises, fallacies, subcultures, etc. And a good laugh when you need it, to boot.

As for their arguments, refuting them is not a very useful tactic, as you’ve no doubt already discovered. Since most of that stuff is garbage anyway, mockery’s a good way to go. If you see anything here that seems relevant there, use it.

And don’t let the shitheads get you down.

Aw, thanks grumpyoldnurse! We really are doing okay otherwise. (Well, except for our roommates’ ceiling kind of melting and possibly breaking our lease soon. BUT OTHER THAN THAT.)

What I want to know is why the FBI hasn’t asked Twitter etc for the IP addresses of the #Gits (or, if it has, why Twitter etc haven’t complied). Rape and death threats aren’t covered by freedom of speech and are illegal, even (especially) on the Internet.

1) Am I right in the impression (admittedly, from one blog) that a large part of Gamergate is driven by Mens’ Righters either just claiming to care about games (like Hoff Sommers, who is funnily enough exactly as clueless about games as the whiners claim Sarkeesian to be) or being both?

I would actually say no, GG is not “driven by” MRAs. Rather, both groups are drawing upon a common source, namely the entitlement that is cultivated in straight white men, and the sheer rage that straight white men sometimes experience when that entitlement is questioned. So you see some overlap in membership, but the members who do not overlap share a common attitude and make the overlap look greater than it is. Men who do not experience this rage are not especially drawn to either group.

2) What would you recommend as a good tactic to a) uncover these guys’ real driving ideology and b) refute their “arguments” without exhausting oneself and feeling slightly dirty?

I would say that their underlying ideology is, generally, the entitlement I just mentioned. Insofar as ferreting it out of individuals? I wouldn’t bother. It’s not worth the energy investment. Refuting their arguments is easy if you can identify the assumptions that underlay them, but learning to do that identification takes practice.

So, I have like… 15 followers on twitter? Me tweeting against GG’s bullshit warranted a hailstorm of belligerent demands of “proof” for my claims, and other childish behavior. I think I literally talked to *ONE* reasonable soul in that 5 hour period, and even he was spouting unreasonable conspiracy theories to deflect the monstrous things people have been doing. There is no way these guys can convince me that this is anything more than misogyny.

Why? Game journalism has had a bias problem since I first became a gamer 27 years ago, and literally no one gave a shit until now. You know what my response to that unethical behavior was 20 years ago? I ended my subscriptions and moved on. The fact that these punks can’t move past this and do something better with their time after almost 2 months on just goes to show that it has nothing to do with ethics. If you are so concerned that these “journalists” (really just ad-men for the big gaming companies) are being shady, you would simply boycott the entire lot of them and be done with it like I did two decades ago.

But they won’t do that, and the harassment, and the death threats continue.

P.S. : When I really tried engaged these people to find out what they were so upset about, it came back to “Social Justice Warriors” trying to “censor” their games. Yes, they literally think criticism equals censorship.