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

Not sure if this article from the Atlantic was posted here before (sorry if so), doesn’t deal with GG, but does deal with rampant online misogyny and harassment of women:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-unsafety-net-how-social-media-turned-against-women/381261/

As for GG, let’s pretend for a moment that hypothetically GG wasn’t just another opportunity for bitter internet neckbeards to do Comment Section Activism and lash out at women, social justice bloggers, “cultural marxists” and whatever other scary boogeymen keep mangry neckbeards awake at night. Let’s say that GG was really was just about integrity in video gaming journalism.

Then it would still just be about integrity in video gaming journalism, which in the grand scheme of things is not exactly this earth shattering scandal. A bunch of gamers reacting to corruption in gaming journalism like it’s the start of WWIII would be ridiculous and over the top even if it weren’t for the misogyny. But, of course, it’s always been mostly about the misogyny and the angry manbabies upset that the mean women and social justice bloggers are taking “their” games away from them.

And how dare those women and social justice types ruin video games by forcing diversity into a form of media that should be the rightful domain of white, heterosexual men. And aliens. And dragons. And wizards. And zombies. And talking plants.

What can I do for zoe quinn?

@repentantphonebooth:

Here’s what you can do.

4) Someday this hypothetical anti-gamer discrimination will get so bad that gamers will be unable to get jobs and will STARVE TO DEATH BY THE MILLIONS.

Or explode in a cloud of Cheeto dust, oh noes!

(Dear Lord. This will put the manufacturers of Cheetos out of business, too. MISANDRY!)

RE: “But they don’t seem like bad people…”

Well, yeah, of course they’ll seem that way – if you interact with them enough.

When I was a teenager, I spent years telling myself that all the racist and sexist things my friends said was just verbal horseplay. The reality was that they were just racists and sexists – I just wanted to justify interacting with them at all. The ideas someone expresses cannot be separated from who they are, in my opinion. We often tell ourselves otherwise because many guilt others with false proclamations of “open-mindedness” whenever they take issue with someone else’s opinions. ‘Cause, hey, they’re just “opinions”…which is still based around how others should be treated (and not for the better).

“Civility” has become something of a smoke-screen in recent years for bigots and other ignoramuses to express themselves openly, while nonetheless stifling any criticism towards them. They care more about their “right” to say and do whatever they please, reducing all views on an issue to “just an opinion” – as if it is all entirely hypothetical and part of some fucked-up rhetorical game.

RE: False Equivalence

I’ve had people say that Gjoni was totally right just ’cause, only to then turn around and say “but both sides are at fault!” It’s a way to look impartial by not being impartial at all. Like demanding facts, only to then claim any evidence given “doesn’t count”.

Fuck, someone on my friend’s list posted a Christina Hoff Sommers article from TIME and I brought up why one should not believe her – which involved statistics from the CDC, FBI, and DoJ – wherein he dismisses it all as “differing opinion.” Nevermind her article was op-ed and that she never brings up a single argument that isn’t backed-up by…another op-ed piece. I bring up her political biases and that she works for the American Enterprise Institute. It didn’t matter, of course, because he seemed determined to believe her while disingenuously claiming he was being totally “objective”.

“Civility” has become something of a smoke-screen in recent years for bigots and other ignoramuses to express themselves openly, while nonetheless stifling any criticism towards them. They care more about their “right” to say and do whatever they please, reducing all views on an issue to “just an opinion” – as if it is all entirely hypothetical and part of some fucked-up rhetorical game.

QFgoddamnT.

This is what pisses me off about flibbertigibbertarians, in a nutshell. They’re all “freedom for me, but none for thee”. And if you call them on their hypocrisy, they bawl about how uncivil and mean you are to them. And then they turn around and start swinging below the belt again.

Crap, how disappointing that the Pirate Party gives these douchebros any space at all.

I’m not surprised at all. Political movements like the Piratpartiet are notorious for being led by young, privileged men. Julian Assange, wikileaks guy and probable rapist, actually made a comment in favor of GamerGate. So has Andrew ‘weev’ Auernheimer, who has become, since his prison time, a LITERAL NAZI. Both men are celebrated internet freedom heroes. Both are incredibly privileged.

It’s like atheism. I may wish I could throw my weight behind this stuff as a movement, but the people driving those movements make me sick.

oh, c’mon, they have more celebrity support than that! Like Adam Baldwin, conspiracy theorist neoconservative Firefly actor. And Milo Yiannopoulos, gay-yet-homophobic Breitbart hack. And Christina Hoff Sommers, professional fake feminist antifeminist.

Basically it’s a far-right bigotry parade.

@cassandrakitty:

Anita Sarkeesian criticising narrative themes and the treatment of women in videogames (which is a goddamned textual analysis and doesn’t require one to be an expert) is bullshit because she’s not a gamer, but Milo, CHS, et al. joining in on the GG side is perfectly fine and welcome.

Because Reasons. Also JERNLIZTIC INTERGITY.

(personally I would’ve thought the sight of a bunch of washed-up right wing hacks glomming onto their cause would’ve given some pause to anybody who actually cared about journalistic ethics, it seems I was mistaken)

I glanced through Julian Assange’s comments about it since I never saw him pop up on any of the Twitter streams I follow. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t know jack shit about the movement and appears to just be co-opting their anger at “censorship” for his own unrelated political reasons… so exactly like all the other celebrities!

Also, I really hate how the rape allegation against him was handled. I have no doubt he could very well be guilty and his victims deserve justice, but the timing of it (ten days before the heavily-hyped cable leak) and the United States’ interest in pressing charges against him was basically begging for every conspiracy theorist and general asshole to immediately shout “FAKE!” It’s bad for everyone and especially his victims, who you know would be immediately doxxed and have to live in fear for the rest of their lives if he ever ends up in court.

@katz, it’s a shortened nick of my real/meatspace name. I was daft enough to not even know it was Russian until recently (someone brought up Misha Collins and things went from there). Kinda cool it is, though 🙂

No doubt they have links to the UK Independence Party too, being both Euroskeptic and reactionary.

Ye gads, not Ukip, Anything but Ukip. Their increasing popularity is everyone’s (least) favourite headache at the moment.

Especially if they bring Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers on Fox & Friends.

Oooh, had a sudden shivery, shuddery feeling. As though someone had just misandered over my grave…

@Bina
The links actually lead you to the website of a sociologist who has done the most work analysing and fighting MANNdat. If you want to look at material for mockery, go to:
http://www.wgvdl.com/ (especially their forum, where all these asshats unite to whine)
http://genderama.blogspot.de/ (Arne Hoffmann’s blog)
http://manndat.de/

@Dennis_Jernberg
Yes, the AfD is basically Tea Party ideology mixed with some of the more unsavoury flavors of German politics. They negotiated with UKIP to work together in the European Parliament, but the more classically liberal (and less nationalist) parts of AfD are against it. Nevertheless, these are losing ground to the far right in the party.

Re: Pirate Party
The problems were very visible from the beginning, at least in Germany. Some from the progressive left hoped it would become better and entered to influence the party from within, but recently, the last lefties have left the party in a widely publicized move. The party handled poorly several cases of Neonazis trying to hijack their “freedom of speech” platform to argue against the illegality of Holocaust denial in Germany. One of its central ideas, “Liquid Democracy” (basically, organizing democratic discourse, plebiscites and elections via social media) fell apart after it became clear to everyone how the party members themselves used Twitter for airing dirty laundry and harassing other members who disagreed on whatever point (of course, particularly feminists). Where they were elected (locally), they showed their incompetence in all political fields outside of their speciality. The Mens’ Rights connection didn’t help.

Re: Gamergate
It’s simply ridiculous to claim this is about corruption in the gaming media. Gamergate exploded while the gamescom was happening in Germany, one of the biggest international trade shows. Journalists from mainstream gaming magazines were brought to the event with buses paid for by the largest companies, who shuffled the journalists to exclusive previews of 30 sec. trailers to promote their newest crap FPS (You know the drill: pre-rendered “live game footage” and so on). The Germany army actually had a recruiting stand there. No one on Gamergate talks about the multifaceted connections between AAA companies and the arms manufacturers, ranging from giving publicity to the newest guns to studios using their game engines to produce military simulators for the army (Bohemia Interactive, the guys behind Arma and DayZ, actually have a sister studio just for that purpose. They share the engine). There is a journalist in Germany who researches this stuff. He has around 7 000 views on YouTube.

Heh … I’m old enough that the name Misha will always bring to mind one image – the 1980 Moscow Olympics mascot.

http://georgesjournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/olympic_lore_moscow_1980_mischa_the_bear_mascot.jpg