Combating Recent, Ugly Incidents of Misogyny In Gamer Culture 1134
ideonexus writes: 2490 gamers, developers and journalists have signed an open letter supporting inclusiveness in the gaming community after indie game developer Zoe Quinn received backlash and harassment when her ex-boyfriend posted false accusations that she traded sex for favorable reviews of her game and feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian was driven from her home after receiving death and rape threats for her videos illustrating the way some mainstream games encourage the commoditization of and violence against women. The harassment has prompted geek-dating advice columnist Harris O'Malley to declare the backlash the "Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture," the last reactionary gasp before the culture shifts to become more inclusive.
Nobody has the right not to be offended. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no such thing as politically correct. There's no such thing as a right not to be offended. Both of these run counter to freedom of speech.
Nobody's going to force me to "include" people that I don't agree with, period. If you don't like it, fuck off.
That being said, the asshole ex-boyfriend should be turned into a eunuch and ridiculed for being such a wuss for the rest of his life.
Who cares. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know anybody who has any idea who these people are, nor do they give one shit about any of this stuff. They just play games. I don't think these "cultures" and "communities" are nearly as big as people think they are. It's limited to a VERY small set of people commenting and participating in all this high-school drama. Of course, once it's on twitter and the internet in general, everyone thinks its way bigger than it actually is.
News flash -- It's not.
One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't seem to be pervasive. We've all seen the recent stats on similar stories. Over half of all gamers are female. Less than 1/5 are under the age 18. The stereotypical teenage boy gamer is a small component of the "gamer" culture.
I doubt this is "Misogyny In Gamer Culture". I think instead this is just a few vocal idiots.
Re:Astroturfing for Hillary Clinton (Score:1, Insightful)
Either that or you're some kind of uber-paranoid idiot savant sans savant...
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem though. When I was in high school, not everyone in the school abused me each day. No, the problem was the 10-20 kids who decided they had to punch someone so they could go home that day, and I was apparently an easy mark. Great fun, let me tell you.
It never requires a huge number of people to oppress an individual or group. It takes others who are willing to do so by force. Written word can be force, too.
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:2, Insightful)
I doubt this is "Misogyny In Gamer Culture". I think instead this is just a few vocal idiots.
Who are possibly outnumbered by professional victims and SJWs.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:1, Insightful)
Reference-less accusations seem to prove the article's point.
Accusations (Score:5, Insightful)
So TFS says that the accusations regarding Zoe Quinn were false. I hadn't heard this bit yet, is the article linked to actually confirmation of that? Sorry, I'd read the articles for myself but work filters are a PITA. The last I had heard was that the guy who writes for RPS and Kotaku had confirmed their sexual relationship.
I honestly don't care about her sex life or lack there of. The only thing of interest to me is a "journalist" possibly sleeping with a person with whom he should have a more professional relation ship with, and not disclosing that fact when making mention of her work, whether positive or negative.
Re:I predict (Score:5, Insightful)
The hypocrisy of third wave feminism should, at the very least, be pointed out, and it's a straw man to call doing that misogynistic.
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:4, Insightful)
About half of all humans are female... and misogyny is widely documented across history and across cultures. The presence or absence of misogyny is thus not correlated with the percentage of females in the population. Not to mention the multiple incidents that have come to light recently should provide further clue that there's far more than 'one bad apple'.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:3, Insightful)
The accuser produces the evidence.
Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. (Score:5, Insightful)
promoting violence against women? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have big issues with suggestions that games promote violence against women.
Most games promote nothing. Collectively they involve a lot of violence.
Some of that violence is against women. Most of it is against men. For instance earlier today I launched a major offensive against a 28000 man army, slaughtering around 79% of the enemy and losing a third of my own men. No women were harmed.
Perhaps someone standing up in public screaming 'me me me' shouldn't be surprised when some fuckwit goes 'yeah, you'. Just keep the rest of us out of it.
Slashdot is Dead (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew it was going downhill for a long time, now it's dead, because it's been taken over by the Social Justice Warriors.
Re:Who cares. (Score:5, Insightful)
True. I play games and never heard of those people before.
HOWEVER.
I also walk on the street and never got mugged or shot at, it doesn't mean it's not happening somewhere else. The fact it's not important to everyone doesn't mean it's not important at all.
Laws are created based on events that might only have happened to a small number of people, and while the vast majority never heard of those laws, they still exist.
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
No, half of console players of female.
You are missing the point, and the fact that you think women need different types of games kind of make you misogynistic in your thinking.
This whole thing is about attitude and attacks women get.
Lets talk about slasher movies.
These movies, by and large, are horrible misogynistic, and well love by women.
When a woman points out that they are misogynistic, no one threatens to rape and kill her.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:3, Insightful)
The inability to go look for yourself means you're the kind of person who doesn't care at all about the facts. The facts are all over the place. Stop being lazy.
Making potentially defamatory claims without evidence is not just lazy, but possibly also illegal depending on where you live. Show your work.
Re:Accusations (Score:1, Insightful)
"So TFS says that the accusations regarding Zoe Quinn were false. I hadn't heard this bit yet, is the article linked to actually confirmation of that?"
Nope, not in one bit. Besides the fact Zoe herself admitted to being a whore publicly kinda ruins any and all chances of those rumors being false.
Re:Again?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we talking about the same Zoe Quinn? The Zoe Quinn who shut down a gamejam specifically targetted at helping women coders, because she perceived it as in competition with her own fundraising efforts?
Re:I predict (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of video games.
B-but she never said that! She did. She doesn't like games, and she isn't a gamer. It must be nice to be such a deluded idiot.
Re:So, where is ... (Score:4, Insightful)
So you argue that some men in shining white armor should come to the aid of the damsels in distress? Isn't it ironic how the harassed women are now used as a damsel-in-distress plot device in some gamer misogyny story?
Zoe Quinn, wait what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I generally dont keep up on this stuff, but the post by Zoe's ex was filled with actual proof that she is apparently unbelievably manipulative. I didnt see any rebuttals, either-- just complaints that he crossed a line by posting private conversations. That can be argued, but noone seems to deny the accusations.
I didnt get to the parts about accusing her of trading sex for reviews or anything, but shes not the shining champion of feminist rights that you want.
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:1, Insightful)
1. The allegations against Quinn are not false - there's plenty of evidence showing this.
2. Sarkeesian has been repeatedly debunked and shown to be nothing more than a con-woman.
3. This is being spun as "misogyny" in gaming to cover up the outright disgraceful and blatant violation of basic journalism ethics around funding and disclosure of websites like Kotaku and Polygon. This is currently the subject of a lot of publicity - that they would rather you not hear, or just dismiss.
4. The Social Justice Warriors have all piled in... in their typical fashion on the side of women... because women can do no wrong.
5. It's so cheap and easy to brand gamers basement dwelling vrigin men-children than it is to look at the facts. Ironically this is EXACTLY the same type of stereotyping and harrassment that the SJWs call complain about (upto and including online bullying, doxxing and death threats). None of them have the basic self-awareness to realise what a bunch of hypocrites they really are.
In short... it's about time gamers started kicking back against the constant politicisation of their hobby and the abuse/harrassment that THEY recieve. As for gaming keeping people out - none of these fucknuts seem to consider that gaming has often attracted the socially excluded precisely because it will take anyone... it's NOT exclusive!
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
It gets even better. Marketing that panders to girls is no less misogynistic. It's actually even WORSE. Marketing for women is all about making women feel like sh*t, especially about their bodies. The stuff is more caustic then genuine porn.
This is just more of the "nerds bad" narrative that the media has been trying to feed us lately. In truth, "gamer culture" is no worse than anything else including the women's magazines that claims to be feminist.
Anything going on in video games is the tail end of the problem.
Recent? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing the article was written by someone that was just born. It has existed forever in gaming. My wife is a gamer chick and back in the 80's she had to deal with this crap.
It's not only video games. she used to play MTG in tournaments 8 years ago (She has a 4 digit DCI number), last time she played she was harassed several times by the low IQ morons that are prevalent in society to the point that she refuses to play it ever again.
This crap is not new, what is needed is people finding these scumbags that pull this crap on girls/women and beating the shit out of them.
Why "SJW"? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like the kind of thing my old paranoid-schizophrenic girlfriend would do when talking about "them", but i presume you are not mentally ill, so there must be some other reason for it. Is it some kind of bonding thing between people who feel threatened by others? Or do you believe that by creating the appearance of some kind of organized opposition that you will sway "neutral" parties toward your side? It just sounds dumb to me, but maybe i'm not the intended audience?
Re:Why "SJW"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me answer your question with a question: why do you feel the need to psychoanalyze someone you know nothing about other than his use of the abbreviation "SJW"? Surely YOU would not engage in thinking all people who use those three letters in a sequence are the same, would you?
Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one thinks she is. But unless she's committing murder, this reaction is overblown. We think the people attacking her are scum for making something that would be a small deal for any male in a similar position into one of the biggest conspiracies ever.
And that their actions reinforce the notion that misogynistic beliefs have become endemic to the "culture" of gaming, inasmuch as it has one.
And that actually ties back to Sarkeesian's work, because science has shown that objectified media leads to this kind of hostility and discrimination against women [slashdot.org].
People are objecting not because Quinn and Sarkeesian are angels, on a pedestal and beyond reproach, but because there are elements of culture that are causing this problem and standing up against it is the only thing that's going to see change.
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, there is no incentive to solve the misogynistic trolling "problem" (assuming it even exists. There is ample evidence Zoe Quinn is a lying sociopath who made the whole thing up). The only thing that's ever done about situations like this is articles and calls to "raise awareness." But those articles are golden clickbait that drive ad revenues. And it's easy, easy writing because it's all been done before. Just open up the "gamers are hateful boys" folder and repost the same hand-wringing crap we wrote last year. Collect the money and wait for it to happen again.
It's all about the money. Quinn profits, the 2000 blogs that have written breathless articles about her plight profit. Nothing actually changes, assuming there was anything changeable to begin with. And now we wait for the next episode.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:2, Insightful)
That slashdot plays along is not surprising, this website has a long reputation of pandering to that crowd and backing down on real facts cases like these. It's much easier to just play along right?
I first heard about Slashdot when I was still dependent on AOL, a dial-up modem and an affordable toll-free regional calling plan.
Then and now when the geek speaks about women, I can't escape the feeling that I have been teleported back to the high school locker rooms of 1964. The only pandering on this site is to the geek's own adolescent sense of manhood,
Re:I predict (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you for fighting the good fight.
I almost didn't even look at the comments here, especially since I'd burnt through the last of my mod points last night, and especially the first wave of really offensive shit that gets posted any time the treatment of women in geek culture comes up just depresses the hell out of me. (I'm trying to stick to the optimistic version opined by another friend, wherein there's a really grim whiny ass first wave, which mostly gets modded down over time. Over course, the friend wrote to me a couple of days back to tell me he'd decided that no, he took it back, anything involving women was getting a fair bit worse.)
The creepiest bit is that half of my social circle, roughly, are male geeks* and they generally seem like a decent bunch, individually and in groups. My students are an amiable bunch, even in those final crunch days as they're trying to wrap up an experiment or get a paper in. Is the first wave of /. comments overwhelmingly from bitter seventeen year olds? Are these some other geeks who I have managed to distance myself from over the years.** Is it possible that some of the entertaining, amiable geeks that I spar with, party with, code with and blow things up with turn feral and run in packs when I'm not around? Eesh.
* Well, okay, that assumes that the martial artists are predominantly geeks, which might get into some kind of definitional argument. *Many* clearly are.
Gamers are the Victims Here (Score:2, Insightful)
This isn't about Zoe Quinn. This is about Gamers being bullied and their hobby being culturally colonised by corrupt hypocrites.
Gamers are the victims here. The people crying misogyny are the real bigots. Look up the harshtags #Gamergate and especially #notyourshield on twitter to get a real feel for what is going on here.
Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no such thing as politically correct.
What's that got to do with this?
You certainly do have the right not to have threats of violence made against you.
You also have the right not to have slanderous and libellous claims made against you.
Even with the laws about freedom of speech none of those things are legal. This isn't about being offended, it's about being threatened and slandered.
Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
People are objecting not because Quinn and Sarkeesian are angels,
No, you are standing up for them because they are women. Women that, as you have admitted, have done bad things. But it's everyone else that are the sexists.
Re:I predict (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a male gamer and I agree with the assertion that video games with women typically find methods of objectifying the female form... but it's not as though video games or gamer culture is unique in this way. The gaming industry objectifies women. As does Hollywood. And print media.
One of the best selling products in history is the female form and it sells well. Sex sells well. What do you do in a capitalist society when there is a seemingly unlimited demand for a product of which you have a nearly unlimited supply? Well, you sell it.
We can even take it a step further an confidently assert that there will always be a sufficient supply of the female form to meet or exceed demand due to psychological imperative with which most Western girls grow up that suggests that if they cannot receive validation of self through other actions or deeds, then there's always the option to resort to sexuality. One could even assert that this persistent and potentially indoctrinated psychological rationale may be one of the roots of reproduction for humanity.
And it's even easier to supply the female form in games because you don't even need a female. You just need artistic skills and an imagination!
So we've defined the multifaceted problem (biologically-enforced demand and an unlimited supply). We've also based the discussion on the issues that such objectification is becoming more and more of a nuisance to the comfort of more and more people (social evolution).
So what is to be done?
Stop all games that singularly sexualize the female form? What if both the male and female forms are equally sexualized? All good?
Do the same for video and print media?
Do we affect demand?
Are we to shame males and lesbians for appreciating the female form in game, video, and print media?
And this is where I always get stuck. If we want to change the frequency or the visibility of the objectification of the female form, we have to affect supply, demand, or both-- but doing so by shaming or legislation seems to infringe not only upon the social contract but upon biological imperatives thus making such an effort pointless.
So what is to be done?
Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody's going to force me to "include" people that I don't agree with, period.
Actually, that's exactly what will happen. There is not right not to be offended, but there is a right not to be harassed or threatened. People are starting to realize that all the "harmless" stuff is just building up to that, as it has done over and over again in the past. As such they are becoming less tolerant of it, and eventually people like you will be ostracised.
So, maybe no-one can force you to include people you don't like (unless it's a business or government setting, in which case anti-discrimination laws apply), but I have a feeling you will when you experience the isolation that comes with being a bigot.
Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've done "bad things". You've done "bad things". That objections is stupid and you knew it when you typed it.
What they haven't done is anything justifying this gigantic shitpile of hate and threats. Which exists because of misogyny. And you have to know you're lying if you claim otherwise.
Take your just world hypothesis bullshit and shove it. If they did something illegal, let the courts handle it. (spoiler, they didn't)
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have ever been on XBOX Live in a game like Call of Duty or Battlefield with a female name you will very quickly realize that it is pervasive. Similar for comment threads on a number of prominent gaming web sites.
More over it definitely is a consistent and widespread problem in games. Almost all adult "open world" style games feature prostitutes, for example. Okay, they exist in real life so they are just being realistic, right? The reality is that they add them in as a cheap way to add "grit" and faux-realism, and then give them the same gameplay mechanics as other objects like vending machines and hotel rooms (usually restoring health in exchange for money). The player is encouraged to use them as disposable, generic tools to further their progress in the game. It's just lazy and unhelpful.
War movies could show realistic violence and the effects of weapons, but that would give half the audience PTSD so despite it being an easy way to make them real and edgy they tone it down. It's about using the medium responsibly.
Re:Accusations (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides the fact Zoe herself admitted to being a whore publicly
Really? I don't remember reading anything about her admitting to taking payment for sex.
Or do you mean that she merely has a lot of sex? In which case take your sexist (I'll recant that accusation if you've ever levelled similar insults at man who has done comparable things), puritanical attitudes somewhere where you might find fellow people who are jealous of others sex lives.
Re:Why "SJW"? (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet a google search on the term accross several pages of results reveals exactly zero people using that phrase to do anything other than describe strawfeminists, either like you're doing, unironically and stupidly, or ironically and mockingly like the comic.
So, good job. You have no real points.
Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. My exposure to this issue has been entirely through articles like this one attempting to demonize the ex-boyfriend, who by all accounts was treated in a way that would have been absolutely blasted if it had been towards a woman. She was cheating on him with the people who were supposed to be reviewing her work, all the while manipulating him into thinking he was crazy for suspecting that she was cheating. She claimed that it would be "rape" to have an intimate relationship with someone while cheating behind their back, and then did exactly that. And shes apparently a chronic liar.
The "huge conspiracy" I simply havent seen; I literally had not heard of this issue until I saw an article on ArsTechnica on what a scumbag guys are for demonizing Zoe Quinn (What? Who?). Apparently shes so notorious that the most white knighting article on Ars and Slashdot cannot have her looking good at the end; theres just too much dirt out there for even the most heavily spun article to hide.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:5, Insightful)
It shows the account was specifically created for this, posted everything in 3 minutes, and was discovered and screencapped 12 seconds later without being logged in or doing a search. In other words: whosoever took the screencap knew about this the moment it was done.
Or maybe Anita Sarkeesian saw the first tweet from that account in her mentions, navigated to the tweeter's Twitter stream, decided to take a screencap, copied the URL, opened up a private tab and took the screen cap. She would have had 3 minutes to do that, and it only takes a few seconds to do.
(The reason why one should always take screen caps in private tabs or private windows is that it minimizes the risk that your screencap will inadvertently reveal any personal information about you.)
Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. (Score:2, Insightful)
>tort law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell
as a public figure, she is open to criticism.
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting - the more people pick on a victim, the more it becomes the victim's fault? Quite the logic there.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:5, Insightful)
Then and now when the geek speaks about women, I can't escape the feeling that I have been teleported back to the high school locker rooms of 1964. The only pandering on this site is to the geek's own adolescent sense of manhood,
I am a geek, and I am not a misogynist. It is wrong for you to engage in prejudicial stereotyping.
Re:Not a lot, just a lot of trolls. (Score:5, Insightful)
Asshole or misogynist, it doesn't matter. The behavior should be viewed as unacceptable. Fuck, do you go around telling people on the street that you're going to kill or rape them? And trying to shade the issue because someone used one negative term rather than the other, when no one will know what the actual motivation was, just gives cover for this obnoxious behavior. You just shouldn't fucking do that shit, mmmkay?
Plus, idiots like these are driving us towards the day when anonymity on the internet goes away. Do you want that? Because that's what it's coming to, boys and girls. So either act like adults and figure out a way to police yourselves in a reasonable way, or get locked down - the internet is now too important to the "normal" function of our society to allow a bunch of misogynists, assholes, or whatever to disrupt it. And the powers that be certainly won't let that happen. Defense of anyone who acts like this for any reason only makes things worse.
Re:I predict (Score:5, Insightful)
She didn't say she doesn't like games, she said that she wasn't a "fan", i.e. just a casual player. I wouldn't say I'm a fan of modern games because I haven't played many, but that doesn't mean if someone invites me to try one I won't enjoy it.
Instead of making ad-hominem attacks why not address the points she makes in her videos directly? Can you point to specific examples of where her research and conclusions were incorrect and undermine her wider argument?
Re:Feminism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:2, Insightful)
She slept with this guy and "coincidentally" her game floated to the top of his list. At the very least it is a conflict of interest.
Whose conflict of interest? I can see how it would be a conflict of interest for the journalist to single out the game like that. I'm not sure what the developers conflict of interest is though.
So lets jump off the deepend straight to accusations that she is a manipulative woman willing to have sex with a journalist to get exposure. Even if that were true, so what? She's not the one required to maintain journalistic integrity. That's on the journalist.
Or maybe the journalist was using his position in the industry to try and get laid. Why aren't we calling him out as a total creep, with no integrity, selling female indie developers exposure for sex? Perhaps he initiated the offer by hinting he'd plug her work if they hooked up?
Or maybe its neither? Maybe two people got together out of some sort of mutual attraction. And the journalist, clearly holding her and her work in some regard makes a bad judgement call to make favorable mention of her work without disclosing the relationship. End of story? Why do we know its not that?
Is there any evidence this was a deliberate attempt to get a favorable review, as opposed to being merely a deliberate attempt by both parties to get laid with the subsequent favorable mention as nothing more than a poor judgement call by the journalist?
Re:Why "SJW"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fictional stereotypes? This is a story about feminists labeling an entire group of people misogynists. They clearly don't have a problem with using the paint brush set to "wide".
Additionally there have been and still are feminists that claim that all heterosexual sex is rape. Which would make pretty much all men rapist. So again, not fictional.
Re:Astroturfing for Hillary Clinton (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it takes millions of rapists (mostly men natch) to reach that number.
And you would be wrong. At least, you would be wrong if you are implying anything other than the majority of rapes are committed by a small minority of predatory men.
How small?
75-80% of rapes are committed by 4-5% of men: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=... [tjradcliffe.com]
That's still seven or eight million men in absolute terms, of course, but far fewer than what is erroneously claimed by the old, failed, misandrist "rape is nothing less than a conscious conspiracy by all men against all women" model.
It is easy for us, as humans, to leap from "all rapists are men" to "all men are rapists". Even if the former proposition were true (it isn't) the latter is unrelated to it.
There is a population of sociopathic predators in our midst. Most of them are men. All of them are dangerous. Their victims are both men and women (we don't even know what the rate of male victimization in sexual assault is... all we know is that the reported rate is much lower than for women, but it would be, wouldn't it?)
Focusing on men vs women rather than citizens vs predators is exactly what the predators need to keep on preying on the innocent. It's time we stopped doing that.
Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm frankly exhausted with dealing with people like you, but you at least seem to be trying to frame this in an honest way, so I'll do my best to not be angry about this.
1. It doesn't matter. You might think the details of what she did wrong matter. They don't matter. Because they're small fries to everything about the video game journalism industry. And over a free twine game. It's not that big deal. However big a deal the personal infractions might seem, they're not that big a deal. That might sound like personal opinion, but it's not. This is a case of proportionality, and the effect sex and sexism have upon the perceived severity of crimes among certain misogynistic subsets of the population.
No one bats an eye when IGN gives for profit game companies who put ads on their site a decent review. And that is so much bigger than a link on a blogpost. Whatever crimes have happened here, they had almost nothing to do with the level and nature of the reaction.
2. It really does matter that the nature of the "crime" was sexual. And that they originated out of a lover's dispute. That's important because, nominally, that's private. You can tell your friends. You can even complain to strangers. But when strangers start getting emotionally invested and involved, it's a symptom of something very wrong. I know, I know, you think that's not you. You're only involved because of "nepotism". Except, see point #1. It's not that big a deal, and the activities involved do not deserve any sort of defense.
3. Gaming culture is broken. Do you really think it's okay that people get called "nigger faggots" on online games? That it's normal? The "It's just a game" excuse doesn't hold up, because that shit doesn't crop up in other types of non-video games. We've let the escapism(which is healthy in moderation) of the system capture the way we treat it each other(which isn't). Heaven help you if you happen to actually reveal yourself as female. Just ask any lady who games, that's not an understatement at all.
And the problem with people like you isn't 1,2 or 3, it's that you're not aware of how bad it is. You don't notice the absolutely detestable levels of shittiness that permeate the behaviors. Threats on your life aren't normal. I make all sorts of strongly opinionated posts on the internet. And no one has ever threatened my life over them. Not even once. I do expect it eventually, but to normalize and dismiss it is completely unreasonable, especially with the severity and focus the threats receive.
These kids(who lets be honest, many are probably are only children mentally) doing abhorrent behavior, they need to see an environment where they don't get an implicit endorsement of their behavior, where people will point out whatever small crime they're fixated on, when they've already done worse themselves.
Re:More than the article states... (Score:4, Insightful)
setting your interesting take on thing aside, if true, none of it means anyone has a right to threaten to beat, rape and kill her.
Because SJWs are not Feminists/Progressives (Score:5, Insightful)
I call the people involved in this scandal "Social Justice Warriors (SJWs)" principally because I refuse to insult the feminist or progressive movements by calling these people with feminists or progressives. Genuine second-wave feminists [twitter.com] have publicly criticised their behaviour.
If you want to understand the difference, look up the #Gamergate [twitter.com] and #NotYourShield [twitter.com] hashtags on twitter. The Social Justice Warriors are hateful, disingenuous, at times sociopathic bigots. They are adult, internet-empowered versions of the bullies and tormentors which many gamers remember from secondary school.
Gamers are the victims here. The modus-operandi of the SJWs is to cast themselves in the cloth of underprivileged groups -- most SJWs are in fact white, upper middle class, college aged -- then proceed to level accusations of privilege, bigotry, and misogyny against just about anyone involved in gaming for even the slightest perceived infractions. A climate of fear has developed, first in the indie and later wider gaming industry as a result of the "social justice" witchhunts which these people regularly engage in. Worse, this has resulted in SJW-aligned developers and journalists rising to positions of power and being first in line for awards and increasingly development funding, with cronyism trumping competence.
For Gaming, so often a hobby of last resort for the excluded and isolated in society, this is an awful and tragic outcome. For gamers, male, female, straight, gay or trans, it is a frightening development. Their hobby, their refuge, is being taken over by bullies.
Because their rhetoric and especially actions come across as so farcically disingenuous, I don't believe for a second that SJWs actually believe in or support the causes of homosexuals or transgender people in video games. Their support for women is also largely forced, and disturbingly biased towards the conservative view of women as a weaker sex who must be protected/defended (A view consistently challenged by the games industry over the years).
My honest opinion of SJWs is that they are privileged Neo-liberals, who adopt a forced social justice persona both to project their own (increasingly obvious) bigotry onto others, and ultimately to benefit themselves socially and financially. They are disingenuous, extremist bullies, and the gaming community is under co-ordinated PR attack [reddit.com], and has been almost completely censored on gaming websites [forbes.com].
The Social Justice Warriors are right about one thing though; this is a historical moment. Whether they win or lose, the GamerGate scandal will be seen as a watershed moment in the history of online-communities, and who controls them. Two weeks ago, I would never have believed that a clique so small could all but take-over a community so large, but it is becoming clear that this is precisely what (almost?) happened to gaming. There are lessons to be learned here, unrelated to the immediate issues, and I only hope the right people will take note and heed them.
Re:False accusations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop moving the goalposts. The accusations by here boyfriend are here:
http://thezoepost.wordpress.co... [wordpress.com]
Tell me, which one of these accusations is false?
Those aren't the false accusations referred to by the article. The false accusations are the ones that suggest that she slept with Nathan Grayson in order to persuade him to write a positive review of one of her games. These accusations were quite widespread (e.g. 1 [ign.com], 2 [gamerheadlines.com], 3 [knowyourmeme.com]), and appear to be completely false because nobody has pointed out a review written by Grayson of any of Quinn's games which was published after the date she's accused of sleeping with him.
Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone who doesn't know her personally would care what men she chooses to sleep with. It's not like it's actually any of our business, really. The one important accusation, that she used sex to get positive reviews for her game, turns out to be false. So let's just forget about the rest, OK?
Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are MAKING this about sex and sexism. Zoes boyfriend was (understandably) upset, and had an actual important grievance to air: that Zoe had a non-neutral relationship with the people supposed to be reviewing her games.
It should have ended there: many such stories do, with the person violating the professional code (ie, "dont sleep with your reviewers and then pretend its unbiased") being discredited and everyone ceasing to care.
But in this case I've seen two stories defending Zoe, and not on factual grounds, but on some bizarre allegation of rampant sexism by untold misogynist males. And then there are posts from people like you, alleging that I, too, am part of the problem because I find her behavior unacceptable (along with the implication that I somehow support men who do the same sorts of things). The entire thing was created out of air; there is no reason to be defending Zoe, and frankly noone outside of some tiny niches cared until ArsTechnica and Slashdot ran these stupid stories accusing everyone with a Y chromosome of being an immoral bastard.
Im really not sure on what grounds youre leveling the accusations that you have been leveling, particularly at me; I've seen you on slashdot, but Im quite certain I dont generally get involved on these cesspool comment threads because theyre utterly ridiculous and usually I have the good sense to let the trolls troll. Maybe the lesson here is to just log out of slashdot and let you and everyone else who cares yell at each other until the end of time. But for your sake I'd recommend you not run around in life accusing random strangers of hating women just because they think there should be standards of journalistic integrity.