Do you remember when #GamerGate was young? You know, back before #NotYourShield and Vivian James and bizarrely complicated conspiracy theories involving Gawker, Weird Twitter and some sort of international Jewish conspiracy?
Remember when #GamerGate was still called #BurgersAndFries, and the angry gamebro army was focused on the real enemy of all that is good and true – a young game designer by the name of Zoe Quinn?
If you’ve been feeling nostalgic for those good old days, you’re in luck. A sprawling blog post by a female friend of Quinn’s obsessive, accusatory ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni takes us back to the dog days of August when his even more sprawling thezoepost was unleashed upon the world.
Rachel M, who describes herself as an “engineer, designer, accidental writer,” recalls the months she spent with Gjoni as he began to process his breakup with Quinn and marshal his arguments against her. She was there when he posted thezoepost, making her a sort of midwife of what became #GamerGate.
It’s no secret whose side of this controversy she’s on. Her depictions of Gjoni are written with affection and indulgence; her portrayal of Quinn is brutal and a step or two beyond unfair. When Rachel M pretends for a moment that she’s not “someone with an ax to grind against Zoe,” that’s because her little hatchet is already buried in Quinn’s back.
If there is a point to GamerGate Launched in My Apartment, and, Internet, I’m Sorry (Not that sorry) beyond making Gjoni look angelic and Quinn look like a demon, I’m not sure what it is.
After presenting us with a series of uninteresting and unnecessary details of her own life, Rachel M repeats a number of largely discredited myths about Quinn and even seems to have made up a new myth of her own, accusing Quinn of “telling Eron she believed I was lying about my PTSD” in an online chat.
Never mind that the chat log itself, which Gjoni pasted into his zoepost, and which Rachel M also pasted into an earlier post of her own, suggests that Quinn was dubious not about Rachel M’s medical diagnoses but about Rachel’s intentions towards her then-boyfriend.
As I searched through the screenshots on Eron’s site to see if Rachel M’s recollections of this exchange matched the evidence, I was struck again by the utter surreality of #BurgersAndFries and its successor #GamerGate.
Because, the thing is, I don’t want to be reading these chat logs. I shouldn’t be reading these chat logs. These are private moments between two people at a vulnerable moment in both of their lives. They shouldn’t have been posted on the internet in an act of petty revenge against an ex-girlfriend. They shouldnt’ be on the internet at all.
The fact that the details of Zoe Quinn and Eron Gjoni’s sex lives and their messy breakup are so central to the conflicts now roiling the video game world that I have to turn to these screenshots to fact check this post is weird and wrong and rather depressing. Zoe Quinn isn’t the president, caught pantsless in flagrante delicto with a Haliburton lobbyist. She’s a video game developer, and the details of her sexual history are none of our fucking business.
None of this matters much to Rachel M, who seems to have become trapped in Gjoni’s reality distortion field, borrowing some of his narcissism for herself. She describes Gjoni’s decision to “go public” with the ugly details of his breakup with Quinn and her various alleged infidelities and lies:
Eron talked about going public. He talked about panic, about awareness, about making sure that people knew what they were getting into, about taking a hit – there’d be a hit, for speaking publicly against a woman in any field, but especially against a woman with Zoe’s position and friends in progressive indie gaming – for the good of all, eventually.
This is so perverse and backwards and wrong it’s hard not to wonder if Gj himself wrote it.
He talked about evaluating the risk to his current job, his future jobs, his family, himself. You know, whether he’d get stalked or murdered for this. He talked about the danger to Zoe, about how he could minimize personal harm toward her, whether he could effectively defray harassment towards her.
Well, he did a bangup job of that, huh?
He settled on a few plans toward that end, and decided the risk to himself was worth it. Even the total loss cases for him still meant greater than zero public knowledge about Zoe’s manipulative behavior, her role as an abuser, and the number of lies she’d told. Anything was better than the way it was now.
Really? Because for a lot of people, not just Quinn, things have gotten a lot worse since Gjoni launched his attack against his ex.
Rachel M is actually quite aware of this; indeed, she notes explicitly that the movement that was born out of Gjoni’s long post has directed much of its fury towards women.
Zoe received floods of hate and threats within hours of the post going live. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic, was forced to cancel a speech at USU after receiving death threats referencing the École Polytechnique Massacre … Brianna Wu, Liana K, and anyone who identifies as a feminist within gaming — they’ve been getting smeared.
Women in games, creators and critics alike, are working through a tide of hate that’s reached the front page of the New York Times. Each new story makes me a little sicker.
Yet somehow she’s still “not that sorry” she helped Gjoni to launch the movement that caused all this. She thinks it’s all somehow … good for women. Because people now know what she thinks is the truth about Zoe Quinn. She ends her post with these bizarre assertions:
I want more women in tech and media, at all levels—in development, in journalism, in the games and books and comics themselves.
I want those women to be as safe, respected, creative, and supported as any man, and I do not want them unprepared in an industry with Zoe Quinn.
And this, I guess, is how someone who helped Gjoni to usher in a hateful, spiteful, reactionary “movement” that has left numerous women fearing for their lives convinces herself that she’s on the side of the angels after all.
EDIT: I corrected Rachel M’s name. No idea why my brain turned her name into Sarah.
Also, my own experience with a post-break-up smear campaign against me* has taught me that there`s always two sides of the story when intimate relationship goes wrong. The thing is, when I read my ex`s blog posts about me, they seemed so sincere, so truthful that I would never doubt him being the victim and the girl (me) being an evil cold bitch who dumped him and broke his heart for minor reasons (and, also cheated on him after the break-up). But he lied, he misrepresented things, totally concealed his own bad acts (physically hitting me and slightly demolishing my kitchen). He also made public one of my e-mails, totally out of context, and that definitely made me look like the bad one. And, yes, there were quite a few acquaintances who believed him, and some of them asked me directly, how could I be so cold.
Therefore, when I see someone like E.G., who`s washing his dirty linen in this magnitude, I seriously question his evidence. Because I`ve seen, how something like that could be easily constructed.
* It was several years ago, it was low-scale and semi-anonymous (like, you wouldn`t find it if googling me, but all of my friends and many acquaintances knew that was about me), it didn`t do me any real harm, and it continued only for about a month.
I think that libarbarian thinks that if we just acknowledged that Zoe could be a bad abuser too, we should also acknolwedge that she couldn’t possibly be a victim, because real victims couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong ever.
Okay, here goes… I acknowledge that Zoe Quinn could have been abusive and mean to Gjoni and been a bad person for him to be around.
Oh, oops, still don’t think the harrassment campaign is justified. Still think she’s a victim of sustained harrassment.
I guess I’m not doing this right, huh?
How is E.G.’s post sic-ing misogynist douchebags on his ex (that he says he wrote because he was angry that his ex sexed some other dudes) anything like video footage of Ray Rice beating his wife?
Not
Even
Wrong
Oh, hey, I have an ex who argued the “you cheated on me after we broke up” thing too*, and you know what the problem with that argument is? If a couple have broken up, one of them sleeping with someone else isn’t cheating, on account of how they have in fact broken up.
*To be fair, he was 19, and a lack of perspective is more excusable at that age.
Yeah, it’s pretty creepy to come onto a post about the continued shitty behaviour of Gjoni & Friends and be like BUT ADMIT ZOE IS A HORRIBLE PERSON ADMIT IT ADMIT IT SHE IS AN ABUSER ADMIT IT.
Like, as far as I can see, no one on this thread has said Zoe is a blameless angel, or denied the possibility that every single thing Gjoni has said about her is true. It could be true and worse. The point is that nothing he’s accused her of even remotely justifies handing her to 4chan on a silver platter. Then, to add insult to injury, Rachel M. Random Irrelevant Person comes along and tries to claim that he was concerned “about how he could minimize personal harm toward [Quinn]” – a claim so mind-bogglingly disingenuous that David wrote a post about it. That’s what this conversation is about. Why is that so controversial?
I..can’t…
My head is just swimming.
A man posts an angry rant about his ex on 4chan, includes details about her sex life and mental illness = proof of a woman abusing a man.
A man beats a woman on camera = proof of a man abusing a woman.
How do people say these things and not see the sexism?
To cassandrakitty:
The only explanation I can think of is that people who do this really feel some kind of ownership, because it doesn`t seem like the usual sadness and jealousy you feel when your ex is moving on but you`re not.
Well, in my case, I was accused of not being clear enough about me ending things (the hints I gave him was telling him that we`re over, repeating it again in e-mail after many, many e-mails from him and switching off my phone for three days, because the constant buzzing was driving me crazy).
Thus Spake ZaraM. the Social Justice Ranger:
Ah ha. Snrk. Now I get it. Thanks!
The only “evidence” we have at all that Quinn was an abusive girlfriend is from Gjoni himself. It’s perfectly reasonable to take it with a grain of salt when you consider that he has admitted to dramatizing the events, being sorry-but-not-sorry that it generated massive, scary attacks against her, and is openly defying a court-issued restraining order.
I have been emotionally abused in the past. I vividly remember the hurt and confusion of it, being scared to tell people, being scared that maybe the abusers were right, and eventually finding the strength to hightail it away from those people and purge every association with them from my life. I’ve talked some about what happened to people I trust, and if the people I’m talking to have no connections to the situation, I don’t even name names of the abusers. My mom and her siblings were emotionally abused by her parents, but they are very careful about who they talk to about it and why. I have had many friends who have been emotionally abused by parents, exes, siblings, teachers, etc. etc. etc., and not a single one of them dealt with it by generating an enormous, public smear campaign, doing everything they can to insert themselves into the lives of their abusers again.
Now, I’m not the coping mechanism police, but Gjoni’s behavior doesn’t make much sense with any framework of emotional abuse victimization I’ve ever seen, and a lot of it is perfectly consistent with how abusers themselves behave. Being a victim of abuse is a vulnerability, not a weapon, and the fact that Gjoni keeps treating it like the latter makes me deeply suspicious.
Quinn does not have to be an angel to be seriously wronged. She can be guilty of emotional abuse and still not deserve the onslaught of harassment that followed. In fact, when the whole mess hit the fan, I was actually completely willing to believe that Quinn had been emotionally abusive, though I still thought the online screed was wildly inappropriate. But the more Gjoni talks and acts out in public, the less I find myself willing to believe him.
Even so, if it WAS a situation of mutual abuse, as you (libarbarian) are insisting, then Quinn is sure dealing with the fallout a heck of a lot more honorably than Gjoni is. Even if she’s only the lesser of two evils, there is no reason we ought to be reluctant to speak out against the abuse she is continuing to publicly be blasted with.
“Even if she’s only the lesser of two evils, there is no reason we ought to be reluctant to speak out against the abuse she is continuing to publicly be blasted with.”
THIS. All day long.
I mean, libarbarian, what exactly is the point of coming on here and demanding we see Quinn as an abuser too? Seriously, besides your hoping that we’ll all magically fall into your misogynistic line of thinking that Quinn deserves to be treated this way because she must have done SOMETHING wrong, what are you trying to get across here? That you’re FAIR? A more impartial judge of the situation?
Because all I’m seeing is a person who is more willing to dismiss the major temper tantrum this guy threw in the wake of a nasty relationship end because the girlfriend he’s attacking isn’t totally and completely innocent of any and all wrongdoing.
So much this!
Also, did the “Zoe is an abuser” narrative started instantly with thezoepost, or later?
I think I got the troll logic!
“They were mutually abusive but Zoe is a Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeemale so it’s much worser in her case, and deserves whatever worser comes her way”
Voilà
@Luzbelitx: +1 on the translation!
Thus Spake ZaraDrdg:
And of course not all relationships draw their boundaries in the same place. Sometimes people are hoping to grow old together, sometimes we’re just looking for something good right now. Sometimes mutual exclusivity is part of the deal, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes partners want to keep their lives and spaces separate, and it’s “love me, love my hobbies and my friends.” And sometimes, despite the best intentions all around, relationships simply cease to be healthy, happy, and beneficial for one or more partners, and it’s time to move on.
So I’m not really interested in hearing a one-sided tale from an angry ex, even under the best of circumstances. It’s far too easy to spin all of that in a way that flatters one partner and demonizes the other. It’s also just not my business, unless I personally am extremely close to the couple in question.
(This is a place where male and het privilege often shows its head — well-meaning people often act as though they have a right to know the details of another’s intimate relationships. Sorry, but you aren’t entitled to that information. Queers, polyfolk, asexuals, and all the other FABGLITTERs are not required to submit the details of their relationships for your approval.)
Kootiepatra: Brilliant post. You explained the “SJW” stance impeccably.
You know, I really hate it when people have a discussion about a form of injustice in the world and a troll elbows in to cry about a different one and why aren’t you guys paying more attention to MY point? Why aren’t you changing the conversation to fit with what I’m saying?! *waaah*
It’s like how every time there is an online discussion about rape culture and how negative attitudes towards women contribute to it a man (almost always a man) busts in to yell “Women rape men too, why aren’t you talking about it, you’re being misandrist by only focusing on female victims!”
@drdg
Yeah, being sad makes sense, even feeling resentful makes sense, but acting as if someone actually had no right to date anyone else after they broke up with you? No, that is not a reasonable stance to take. And what’s creepy is how common it seems to be among sexist dudes. I used to have a coworker who, apropos of nothing, butted into a conversation a bunch of other coworkers were having about our exes to say “if a man has fucked a woman he owns her”, which go exactly the sort of “who pooped in the pool?” response you’d expect from reasonable people. He was 100% convinced that he was a. right and b. being totally reasonable, though.
I don’t see how cheating on your partner cancels out any activism you do. Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his wife. The most famous activist in US history cheats on his wife and gets to keep his legacy. People don’t even mention it that often. When it is mentioned, it’s usually in the context of awful J. Edgar Hoover was for having the FBI dig into his life to find dirty laundry even though being a civil rights activist is hardly a federal crime. Yet when a little known indie game developer allegedly cheats on her boyfriend it’s the end of the world? Yeah, no misogyny and double standards there!
I was thinking the same thing. I’m not an abuse survivor, so I really can’t claim to speak for those who are. But everyone I’ve spoken to who left an abusive relationship wasn’t plotting revenge or trying to fight restraining orders. They were trying to stay strong and not go back. They were rebuilding their lives and self esteem. After getting some distance they tend not to want anything to do with their abusers.
Like I said, I can’t speak for a group I’m not in, but Eron Gjoni really doesn’t fit any pattern of abuse survivors I’ve ever seen. As others have noted, his behavior is more similar to an abuser than a victim.
At the start of this whole thing I was willing to concede that he may in fact have been abused while still believing his behavior was dead wrong. However, the more I read about him, the less seriously I take any of his claims.
Librarian,
If you’re still here, can you answer a couple of questions?
If you truly believe that both sides are bad, do you go onto pro gamergate forums and try to get the gaters to concede that Gjoni was the bad guy too? If not, why not? If so, provide a link or I won’t believe you.
Do you believe that War Machine and Christy Mack are equally bad because she maybe slept with another guy after they had broken up and that perception was what triggered him trying to kill her? If not, why not? How is it different for an angry ex to send internet misogynists to make death threats rather than commit the violence with his own hands?
Well, this is the moment when I can`t even. I hope it`ll return to me, but for now – yep, I definitely can`t even.
@Drdg
Probably this has already been posted her, but I hope it helps you deal with this terrible moment:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qjEYxlRV3hE/VD-gikAWX0I/AAAAAAAA_So/_N5yCijYTTo/s0/how-to-even-for-dummies.jpg
FYI everybody, the 4chan strangler has turned themselves in:
http://www.wdrb.com/story/27313390/oregon-man-surrendered-after-police-say-images-of-gruesome-murder-posted-online
@maistrechat: AAAAAGH HIS MUGSHOT IS COMING ON TO ME
Also apparently the victim’s son spent the whole day at school, came home, took a nap and then found her. That must have been awful.
Yeah, sometimes you’re just sitting there going “wait, what?”. We should do the terrible coworker hall of fame some time.
I have stories for that Hall of Shame.
I’ve got one story for that Hall of Shame. At one job, my supervisor had some … unreconstructed ideas about dreadlocks and how you make ’em.
Also, her kids had apparently named their Jack Russell “Hans” Solo.