you know you could argue that radical feminists have taken over the video game industry while still acknowledging that harassment against women is real and terrible and has to be stopped
i wonder why they never do that
Not going to lie I am from the 8chan camp coming to take a look at the other side. Decrying it is pretty much 80% of what we do besides emails.
it seems to me that what you are doing is decrying individual instances of harassment while staunchly ignoring the elements of gaming culture which makes harassment possible
you're "against harassment" but you refuse to see a pattern in it, you refuse to acknowledge that there are ways our society encourage it. and whenever anyone tries to identify a root cause of harassment you get incredibly hostile.
if you say you're against harassment but refuse to do anything about the reasons people get harassed and actively impede anyone else's efforts to do so, you are de facto pro harassment
I don't see myself as getting hostile just looking for a starting point to a conversation.
In what way would you see society as a whole encouraging harassment? What is the root or what do you believe it is? For me I think it is very, very easy to latch on to out-liners to people who lack self control and do extremely foolish and terrible things and use it to paint a large group.
I honestly do not see female harassment very often in society and rarely if ever have I seen it tolerated. Again I don't want to howl at the moon here what do you believe is the cause of people getting harassed and what would be the best way to go about fixing it?
are you a man?
because if you are, you wouldn't see casual sexism. it would be invisible to you. i'm a man. i don't see it, particularly. but enough women have spoken out recently about it that i am forced to conclude either that casual sexism is a big problem or that there is a big conspiracy to lie about it.
(you might not be a man, of course, i've also spoken to women who don't perceive this hostility, but on balance more that do)
so i'm convinced that we live in a society that is, in many ways, hostile to women. there are a few reasons for this. men are raised to feel that they are entitled to women's bodies, that women owe them sex and are doing something wrong by not offering it to them. women are conditioned not to speak out against sexual harassment, so that when it happens, people don't find out about it. both genders are expected to live up to certain rigid expectations - men, to never show emotion or weakness, women, to value themselves by how much men value them. there's a lot of other stuff going on but that's the gist of it
the best way to fix this is to constantly speak out about this, to censure others for it and to look for it in your own behaviour. critiques like anita's are part of that, although i haven't watched anita's videos and i don't know if they're any good. by trying to get feminist critique out of video game media, then, you are making it impossible to speak out about any of the social issues that encourage men to harass women in the first place. hence, the charges that gamergate is pro-harassment
there's also the way it likes to blatantly ignore every women who's been harassed for opposing it but let's not get into that
There are several point I would like to make here and sorry for not getting to it in a more timely manner I can only type so fast.
I am a man though I question this invisible sexism you hear about. Let me preface this by saying I think it is alright to be offended in life. I however do not think things in life should be changed just because you were offended. I can not speak for how most people are raised except a small group of friends I have know since kindergarten but I have never witnessed a boy being taught that women exist only to please them nor that they are entitled to there body. I have not know any women either those I am friends with dated or worked with that have been conditioned against speaking out about sexual harassment if anything I have only seen the opposite. As for gender roles. Yeah that is a very real thing that I would like to see broken down and I have seen first hand how much crap you can get for something simple like being a stay at home dad.
For your last point I would recommend watching anita's videos they are a odd case study if nothing else. Parts of them make extremely solid and reasonable points but every once and a while she makes a very bizarre leap of logic that comes out of nowhere that at least in my opinion is a large part of why her videos are so hotly debated behind just the trolls.
You do realize that casual sexism and objectification isn't generally something that is like... traditionally "taught."
Like there's no objectifying women 101. It's something that is absorbed over time from the broader culture, and isn't always necessarily noticeable unless you're cognizant of it. That's the reason why Anita Sarkeesian is doing the work she's doing.
i actually didn't think sam biddle's was a great tweet
like making fun of nerds for being virgins or calling out actual women as being sockpuppets, i think it is an example of poor behaviour that gets swept under the rug because the people doing it are on the right side
in general i think you have to be suspicious of any argument that sounds exactly like a gamergate argument, of which "well i was OBVIOUSLY joking" is a prime example
i definitely don't care very much about it or think it's at all a big deal, though
While I agree with you, I can also guarantee that there's a lot of indirect context that probably incited him to make such a tweet, ill-advised as it was. Things like seeing people say how Zoe Quinn deserved being doxxed because she cheated on her boyfriend, or saying that Anita Sarkeesian deserves all the harassment she gets because she's being mean to games, or whatever. You can find stuff on twitter like that right now without much leg work. Journalists probably get stuff like that sent to them directly, though, ie "why aren't you driving this lying cunt out of the industry already you must be CORRUPT."
That doesn't change the fact that it was a dumb tweet to make.
yeah, it's tone policing again
zoe can be as flippant as she likes, nobody on earth has the right to judge zoe for being flippant at this point. she is entitled to say that everyone who has ever looked at a video game is a warbling misogynist piss baby
sam biddle less so, because sam biddle hasn't, as far as i know, been directly affected by any of this
but i don't know enough about him
i certainly don't think he should be, like, fired from gawker
Can you explain why?
The thing I find so hard in all of this is that it seems people only do things wrong if they are on the side you don't support.
Well mainly because there aren't "two sides" here. There's GamerGate, and there's the rest of the world.
GamerGate, by design, has no leadership, which means anyone who wants to can join in the crowd and say "I am GamerGate" and no one else can say a damn thing about it, because there's no platform and no leadership.
But people opposed to GamerGate are a both a random assortment of people AND people who don't necessarily associate as a group.
For example, I'm against GamerGate because I don't like women being driven out of the industry. But a super anti-feminist MRA guy could hate gamergate because he thinks they're "Betas." Me and Fedoraman have nothing in common, except that we both hate gamergate (For very different reasons). Since I believe in social justice, I'm going to make efforts not to be an asshole to people on twitter about it. Because Fedoraman thinks Betas need to be told what's what, he might threaten GG people for the fun of it. I can say outright that Fedoraman, whoever he is, is a shitlord who I do not associate with in any way, and it's absolutely true.
But while I can't be held responsible for Fedoraman's actions, someone in GG does have a certain amount of responsibility for people taking their banner and using it for hate reasons. Because the people under that banner both willingly associate and refuse leadership. Which is a pretty toxic combination as we've found out. The hostile faction gets a free smokescreen from the nice people.
Alright but why?
Why is it you are immune to the very same accusation you throw?
This is what I do not honestly understand if someone claims to be for socail justice using your own example. They can not be used to smear someone else using the term social justice.
I might be a very slow person I admit that the last to get a joke and all if I simply change the terms social justice and gamergate what has changed?
I honestly still hope that at the end of this there can be some common ground but for that to start at the very least you have to hold yourself to the very standard you hold the people you view as against you.
I do not see gamergate talking about driving women from the industry and I have been following it nearly daily since the start.
I think it has gotten to the point where the two sides have simply demonized each other we have to realize that on both sides of the fence we are for the most part rational people.
One is reactionary, one is activly seeking out conflict
Gamergate goes out and seeks people to attack
"Social Justice Warriors" react to this and try to make the women that have been chased from their homes be able to return by trying to stop harrassment
Have they found out who it was that did so? You will not convince me that looking for witches to burn over the actions of a few is a wise course of action to take if that is what you are suggesting. No one is arguing that sending death threats is excusable but I do not see the sense in what it is you are trying to say.
Repurpousing accounts from #endfathersday and others from whatever the name of the hashtag that encouraged people to cut themselves in suppourt of Justin Bieber
Every gamergate video I have seen uses the word whore and slut more than a telegraph uses the word stop
If you havent seen these, Suprise! You are part of a MRA movement to drive women from gaming
If you have, you have no excuse
Edit: I mean it has been identified by a agency whose sole purpouse is identifying Hate Groups as a Hate Group. Stop fooling yourself
To play devils advocate...
The first part of your post referring to what happened before gamergate (at least that is my understanding if it was after then I admit I am wrong) shows there are trolls on 4 chan that want to rile people up... I don't think anyone would argue that.
As for your videos. Is it not possible that you only search out videos that already are agreeable to your view point? I haven't seen anyone referred to as a slut outside of one speaker. Now to be completely fair I am guilty of looking for videos that I agree it. It could be possible I have been willing blind and am more then interested in seeing the videos you are referring to.
What agency identified it as hate group?
Alright
I give up
Ive been running a marathon for days but for some weird reason the finish line keeps getting moved
So you win! Gamergate isnt terrible
I guess those death threats are just the natural byproduct of any reasonable movement
My goal is not to win nor to lose but to try and find some common ground to move forward if that is at all possible at this point.
I believe the core of gamergate is founded on ethics as much as that seems a running meme here...
I do not wish to make you pro or even not against it anymore but I want to try to understand your side of it as well. I would like to start seeing if not a end to it at least the recognition that the majority of each side isn't composed of monsters.
Actually, I agree with others that this won't work. It'll get hijacked.
Want an actual discussion? Start a forum that can be moderated so you get rid of the harassing chuckle fucks. Maybe a subreddit, named, I don't know, KotakuInAction. They're discussing ethics there, right?
you know you could argue that radical feminists have taken over the video game industry while still acknowledging that harassment against women is real and terrible and has to be stopped
i wonder why they never do that
Not going to lie I am from the 8chan camp coming to take a look at the other side. Decrying it is pretty much 80% of what we do besides emails.
it seems to me that what you are doing is decrying individual instances of harassment while staunchly ignoring the elements of gaming culture which makes harassment possible
you're "against harassment" but you refuse to see a pattern in it, you refuse to acknowledge that there are ways our society encourage it. and whenever anyone tries to identify a root cause of harassment you get incredibly hostile.
if you say you're against harassment but refuse to do anything about the reasons people get harassed and actively impede anyone else's efforts to do so, you are de facto pro harassment
I don't see myself as getting hostile just looking for a starting point to a conversation.
In what way would you see society as a whole encouraging harassment? What is the root or what do you believe it is? For me I think it is very, very easy to latch on to out-liners to people who lack self control and do extremely foolish and terrible things and use it to paint a large group.
I honestly do not see female harassment very often in society and rarely if ever have I seen it tolerated. Again I don't want to howl at the moon here what do you believe is the cause of people getting harassed and what would be the best way to go about fixing it?
are you a man?
because if you are, you wouldn't see casual sexism. it would be invisible to you. i'm a man. i don't see it, particularly. but enough women have spoken out recently about it that i am forced to conclude either that casual sexism is a big problem or that there is a big conspiracy to lie about it.
(you might not be a man, of course, i've also spoken to women who don't perceive this hostility, but on balance more that do)
so i'm convinced that we live in a society that is, in many ways, hostile to women. there are a few reasons for this. men are raised to feel that they are entitled to women's bodies, that women owe them sex and are doing something wrong by not offering it to them. women are conditioned not to speak out against sexual harassment, so that when it happens, people don't find out about it. both genders are expected to live up to certain rigid expectations - men, to never show emotion or weakness, women, to value themselves by how much men value them. there's a lot of other stuff going on but that's the gist of it
the best way to fix this is to constantly speak out about this, to censure others for it and to look for it in your own behaviour. critiques like anita's are part of that, although i haven't watched anita's videos and i don't know if they're any good. by trying to get feminist critique out of video game media, then, you are making it impossible to speak out about any of the social issues that encourage men to harass women in the first place. hence, the charges that gamergate is pro-harassment
there's also the way it likes to blatantly ignore every women who's been harassed for opposing it but let's not get into that
There are several point I would like to make here and sorry for not getting to it in a more timely manner I can only type so fast.
I am a man though I question this invisible sexism you hear about. Let me preface this by saying I think it is alright to be offended in life. I however do not think things in life should be changed just because you were offended. I can not speak for how most people are raised except a small group of friends I have know since kindergarten but I have never witnessed a boy being taught that women exist only to please them nor that they are entitled to there body. I have not know any women either those I am friends with dated or worked with that have been conditioned against speaking out about sexual harassment if anything I have only seen the opposite. As for gender roles. Yeah that is a very real thing that I would like to see broken down and I have seen first hand how much crap you can get for something simple like being a stay at home dad.
For your last point I would recommend watching anita's videos they are a odd case study if nothing else. Parts of them make extremely solid and reasonable points but every once and a while she makes a very bizarre leap of logic that comes out of nowhere that at least in my opinion is a large part of why her videos are so hotly debated behind just the trolls.
So, hello, I'm a woman and a gamer. I was playing Warhammer Fantasy against a random opponent I found in a Games Workshop store. I rolled two sixes in a row. My opponent looked at me and said, "After this game, I am going to follow you home and rape you to death."
Do you think that is something that is so offensive that accomodations should be made to stop that behaviour? If yes, then we can agree that there are egregious sexist acts that demand society formulate some kind of response.
Now, the smaller you get, the more difficult it is to make those sort of claims and actions. When that man said that to me, he was escorted out of the store by security and spoke to police. This was a Notable Incident that was treated with Immediate Action.
However, when another player walked up to my fiance and said "Oh my god, you're... you're dating her? You're a fucking hero, man. I wish I could have a gamer girl." This was an act of sexism. Compared to the above example, it's practically a compliment. However, it's still something that removes my personhood and makes me an object. I find it kind of gross. In an instance like this, we would not call in the police. However, we could work on education that explains why that kind of thing, despite being meant as a compliment, is kind of gross and unbecoming.
Unfortunately, when we try to talk about these social issues, like through an educational YouTube series or a blog post, we tend to get harassed, doxxed, threatened, and insulted.
I am looking at Sithlord Sabrina's Twitter, a person who for the past month has literally tweeted only about Gamergate, primarily how Gamergate is totally not about hating women. It says she joined Twitter in 2009, but her first post appears to be on Oct. 2. (Perhaps I'm not good enough at Twitter to look at her older posts.
I wonder if @Thom has met any women in real life who are fans of Gamergate.
Not that I'm suggesting that not all the women in support of Gamergate are not real human women.
I haven't met anyone who actually knows about GamerGate tbh. Most of my time is spent studying anyway. I have 5 classes, including Linear Algebra, Latin, and Econ. Not the easiest course load. Most of the people I meet are asians from asia. The chance of them hearing about GamerGate, let alone caring about it, is slim to none.
so i've been hearing a lot about this zoe quinn person
what i want to know is this. is she lying about being doxxed or isn't she? the people demand answers!
So.. anybody get the feeling like this thread just pulled the final boss?
Remember years ago that Everquest dragon that was unkillable, but could be beaten my many hours of what can only be called a mockery of normal gameplay, and in doing so you disable the whole raid for the entire server but it doesn't matter because the refs just move the goalposts as you line up to kick anyway?
you know you could argue that radical feminists have taken over the video game industry while still acknowledging that harassment against women is real and terrible and has to be stopped
i wonder why they never do that
Not going to lie I am from the 8chan camp coming to take a look at the other side. Decrying it is pretty much 80% of what we do besides emails.
it seems to me that what you are doing is decrying individual instances of harassment while staunchly ignoring the elements of gaming culture which makes harassment possible
you're "against harassment" but you refuse to see a pattern in it, you refuse to acknowledge that there are ways our society encourage it. and whenever anyone tries to identify a root cause of harassment you get incredibly hostile.
if you say you're against harassment but refuse to do anything about the reasons people get harassed and actively impede anyone else's efforts to do so, you are de facto pro harassment
I don't see myself as getting hostile just looking for a starting point to a conversation.
In what way would you see society as a whole encouraging harassment? What is the root or what do you believe it is? For me I think it is very, very easy to latch on to out-liners to people who lack self control and do extremely foolish and terrible things and use it to paint a large group.
I honestly do not see female harassment very often in society and rarely if ever have I seen it tolerated. Again I don't want to howl at the moon here what do you believe is the cause of people getting harassed and what would be the best way to go about fixing it?
are you a man?
because if you are, you wouldn't see casual sexism. it would be invisible to you. i'm a man. i don't see it, particularly. but enough women have spoken out recently about it that i am forced to conclude either that casual sexism is a big problem or that there is a big conspiracy to lie about it.
(you might not be a man, of course, i've also spoken to women who don't perceive this hostility, but on balance more that do)
so i'm convinced that we live in a society that is, in many ways, hostile to women. there are a few reasons for this. men are raised to feel that they are entitled to women's bodies, that women owe them sex and are doing something wrong by not offering it to them. women are conditioned not to speak out against sexual harassment, so that when it happens, people don't find out about it. both genders are expected to live up to certain rigid expectations - men, to never show emotion or weakness, women, to value themselves by how much men value them. there's a lot of other stuff going on but that's the gist of it
the best way to fix this is to constantly speak out about this, to censure others for it and to look for it in your own behaviour. critiques like anita's are part of that, although i haven't watched anita's videos and i don't know if they're any good. by trying to get feminist critique out of video game media, then, you are making it impossible to speak out about any of the social issues that encourage men to harass women in the first place. hence, the charges that gamergate is pro-harassment
there's also the way it likes to blatantly ignore every women who's been harassed for opposing it but let's not get into that
There are several point I would like to make here and sorry for not getting to it in a more timely manner I can only type so fast.
I am a man though I question this invisible sexism you hear about. Let me preface this by saying I think it is alright to be offended in life. I however do not think things in life should be changed just because you were offended. I can not speak for how most people are raised except a small group of friends I have know since kindergarten but I have never witnessed a boy being taught that women exist only to please them nor that they are entitled to there body. I have not know any women either those I am friends with dated or worked with that have been conditioned against speaking out about sexual harassment if anything I have only seen the opposite. As for gender roles. Yeah that is a very real thing that I would like to see broken down and I have seen first hand how much crap you can get for something simple like being a stay at home dad.
For your last point I would recommend watching anita's videos they are a odd case study if nothing else. Parts of them make extremely solid and reasonable points but every once and a while she makes a very bizarre leap of logic that comes out of nowhere that at least in my opinion is a large part of why her videos are so hotly debated behind just the trolls.
Sexism isn't a class taught in school
Victim blaming isn't a course in college
These are phenomenon endemic to society that need to be identified and spoken about in order to be eradicated
Do you get your keys out before you approach you car in a dark parking lot? Do you cross the street when walking alone at night and you see a guy or group of guys coming towards you? Do you check your drink or keep it in your sight at all times at parties?
There are many things women deal with on a daily basis that are the result of institutional and societal sexism (which is not as bad as its historically been but is still present) that might be very hard to understand from a male perspective if you don't stop to really think about it
So.. anybody get the feeling like this thread just pulled the final boss?
there's gonna be a quick time event isn't there....
+1
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Hey guys this thread is almost at 100 pages now, and it looks like we aren't getting a second one. Thanks again for those who politely discussed the topic! @spacekungfuman we disagree about a lot of stuff but I do appreciate you trying to see things from another perspective sometimes! @Astaereth I think your long post about narrative in games is one of my favorite posts from this board, I wish we still had an Awesome posts forum so I could bookmark it! @Bluedude152 I think we need a hashtag to find out what happened to those puppies!
Thanks all!
Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
On my sleeve, let the runway start
During the 1970s and '80s, Ayds diet candy was riding high: The butterscotch, chocolate and various other flavored diet candies somehow fooled the public into thinking they actually worked, and the owners had enough of that sweet sugar money rolling in to choke a whole squadron of Oompa Loompas. But just as the CEOs mounted a pile of tiny dead orange strippers to proclaim the invincibility of their confectionery empire to the world, the AIDS epidemic hit, and shit stopped being funny in a hurry.
But despite the product now sharing a name with a modern-day plague, the manufacturer of Ayds decided to stick it out, operating on Michael Bolton of Office Space's principle of "AIDS is the one that sucks, so they're the one that should change." The company so obstinately refused to acknowledge the problem that they didn't even alter their now seriously questionable tagline: "Ayds helps you take off weight and helps you keep it off." And the candy company kept this up as AIDS ravaged the modern world around them, all the while quietly insisting that this whole pandemic thing would blow over and history would only remember the real Ayds. For evidence of how well that plan worked, take a look at this commercial, and count how many blackly hilarious double-entendres you catch in its roughly 30-second run time:
i actually didn't think sam biddle's was a great tweet
like making fun of nerds for being virgins or calling out actual women as being sockpuppets, i think it is an example of poor behaviour that gets swept under the rug because the people doing it are on the right side
in general i think you have to be suspicious of any argument that sounds exactly like a gamergate argument, of which "well i was OBVIOUSLY joking" is a prime example
i definitely don't care very much about it or think it's at all a big deal, though
While I agree with you, I can also guarantee that there's a lot of indirect context that probably incited him to make such a tweet, ill-advised as it was. Things like seeing people say how Zoe Quinn deserved being doxxed because she cheated on her boyfriend, or saying that Anita Sarkeesian deserves all the harassment she gets because she's being mean to games, or whatever. You can find stuff on twitter like that right now without much leg work. Journalists probably get stuff like that sent to them directly, though, ie "why aren't you driving this lying cunt out of the industry already you must be CORRUPT."
That doesn't change the fact that it was a dumb tweet to make.
yeah, it's tone policing again
zoe can be as flippant as she likes, nobody on earth has the right to judge zoe for being flippant at this point. she is entitled to say that everyone who has ever looked at a video game is a warbling misogynist piss baby
sam biddle less so, because sam biddle hasn't, as far as i know, been directly affected by any of this
but i don't know enough about him
i certainly don't think he should be, like, fired from gawker
Can you explain why?
The thing I find so hard in all of this is that it seems people only do things wrong if they are on the side you don't support.
Well mainly because there aren't "two sides" here. There's GamerGate, and there's the rest of the world.
GamerGate, by design, has no leadership, which means anyone who wants to can join in the crowd and say "I am GamerGate" and no one else can say a damn thing about it, because there's no platform and no leadership.
But people opposed to GamerGate are a both a random assortment of people AND people who don't necessarily associate as a group.
For example, I'm against GamerGate because I don't like women being driven out of the industry. But a super anti-feminist MRA guy could hate gamergate because he thinks they're "Betas." Me and Fedoraman have nothing in common, except that we both hate gamergate (For very different reasons). Since I believe in social justice, I'm going to make efforts not to be an asshole to people on twitter about it. Because Fedoraman thinks Betas need to be told what's what, he might threaten GG people for the fun of it. I can say outright that Fedoraman, whoever he is, is a shitlord who I do not associate with in any way, and it's absolutely true.
But while I can't be held responsible for Fedoraman's actions, someone in GG does have a certain amount of responsibility for people taking their banner and using it for hate reasons. Because the people under that banner both willingly associate and refuse leadership. Which is a pretty toxic combination as we've found out. The hostile faction gets a free smokescreen from the nice people.
Alright but why?
Why is it you are immune to the very same accusation you throw?
This is what I do not honestly understand if someone claims to be for socail justice using your own example. They can not be used to smear someone else using the term social justice.
I might be a very slow person I admit that the last to get a joke and all if I simply change the terms social justice and gamergate what has changed?
I honestly still hope that at the end of this there can be some common ground but for that to start at the very least you have to hold yourself to the very standard you hold the people you view as against you.
I do not see gamergate talking about driving women from the industry and I have been following it nearly daily since the start.
I think it has gotten to the point where the two sides have simply demonized each other we have to realize that on both sides of the fence we are for the most part rational people.
One is reactionary, one is activly seeking out conflict
Gamergate goes out and seeks people to attack
"Social Justice Warriors" react to this and try to make the women that have been chased from their homes be able to return by trying to stop harrassment
Have they found out who it was that did so? You will not convince me that looking for witches to burn over the actions of a few is a wise course of action to take if that is what you are suggesting. No one is arguing that sending death threats is excusable but I do not see the sense in what it is you are trying to say.
Repurpousing accounts from #endfathersday and others from whatever the name of the hashtag that encouraged people to cut themselves in suppourt of Justin Bieber
Every gamergate video I have seen uses the word whore and slut more than a telegraph uses the word stop
If you havent seen these, Suprise! You are part of a MRA movement to drive women from gaming
If you have, you have no excuse
Edit: I mean it has been identified by a agency whose sole purpouse is identifying Hate Groups as a Hate Group. Stop fooling yourself
To play devils advocate...
The first part of your post referring to what happened before gamergate (at least that is my understanding if it was after then I admit I am wrong) shows there are trolls on 4 chan that want to rile people up... I don't think anyone would argue that.
As for your videos. Is it not possible that you only search out videos that already are agreeable to your view point? I haven't seen anyone referred to as a slut outside of one speaker. Now to be completely fair I am guilty of looking for videos that I agree it. It could be possible I have been willing blind and am more then interested in seeing the videos you are referring to.
What agency identified it as hate group?
Alright
I give up
Ive been running a marathon for days but for some weird reason the finish line keeps getting moved
So you win! Gamergate isnt terrible
I guess those death threats are just the natural byproduct of any reasonable movement
My goal is not to win nor to lose but to try and find some common ground to move forward if that is at all possible at this point.
I believe the core of gamergate is founded on ethics as much as that seems a running meme here...
I do not wish to make you pro or even not against it anymore but I want to try to understand your side of it as well. I would like to start seeing if not a end to it at least the recognition that the majority of each side isn't composed of monsters.
If the core is about ethics then why did you bring up Anita in your last post? Why is she involved in any way? She's not a journalist, why is she brought up at all?
i actually didn't think sam biddle's was a great tweet
like making fun of nerds for being virgins or calling out actual women as being sockpuppets, i think it is an example of poor behaviour that gets swept under the rug because the people doing it are on the right side
in general i think you have to be suspicious of any argument that sounds exactly like a gamergate argument, of which "well i was OBVIOUSLY joking" is a prime example
i definitely don't care very much about it or think it's at all a big deal, though
While I agree with you, I can also guarantee that there's a lot of indirect context that probably incited him to make such a tweet, ill-advised as it was. Things like seeing people say how Zoe Quinn deserved being doxxed because she cheated on her boyfriend, or saying that Anita Sarkeesian deserves all the harassment she gets because she's being mean to games, or whatever. You can find stuff on twitter like that right now without much leg work. Journalists probably get stuff like that sent to them directly, though, ie "why aren't you driving this lying cunt out of the industry already you must be CORRUPT."
That doesn't change the fact that it was a dumb tweet to make.
yeah, it's tone policing again
zoe can be as flippant as she likes, nobody on earth has the right to judge zoe for being flippant at this point. she is entitled to say that everyone who has ever looked at a video game is a warbling misogynist piss baby
sam biddle less so, because sam biddle hasn't, as far as i know, been directly affected by any of this
but i don't know enough about him
i certainly don't think he should be, like, fired from gawker
Can you explain why?
The thing I find so hard in all of this is that it seems people only do things wrong if they are on the side you don't support.
Well mainly because there aren't "two sides" here. There's GamerGate, and there's the rest of the world.
GamerGate, by design, has no leadership, which means anyone who wants to can join in the crowd and say "I am GamerGate" and no one else can say a damn thing about it, because there's no platform and no leadership.
But people opposed to GamerGate are a both a random assortment of people AND people who don't necessarily associate as a group.
For example, I'm against GamerGate because I don't like women being driven out of the industry. But a super anti-feminist MRA guy could hate gamergate because he thinks they're "Betas." Me and Fedoraman have nothing in common, except that we both hate gamergate (For very different reasons). Since I believe in social justice, I'm going to make efforts not to be an asshole to people on twitter about it. Because Fedoraman thinks Betas need to be told what's what, he might threaten GG people for the fun of it. I can say outright that Fedoraman, whoever he is, is a shitlord who I do not associate with in any way, and it's absolutely true.
But while I can't be held responsible for Fedoraman's actions, someone in GG does have a certain amount of responsibility for people taking their banner and using it for hate reasons. Because the people under that banner both willingly associate and refuse leadership. Which is a pretty toxic combination as we've found out. The hostile faction gets a free smokescreen from the nice people.
Alright but why?
Why is it you are immune to the very same accusation you throw?
This is what I do not honestly understand if someone claims to be for socail justice using your own example. They can not be used to smear someone else using the term social justice.
I might be a very slow person I admit that the last to get a joke and all if I simply change the terms social justice and gamergate what has changed?
I honestly still hope that at the end of this there can be some common ground but for that to start at the very least you have to hold yourself to the very standard you hold the people you view as against you.
I do not see gamergate talking about driving women from the industry and I have been following it nearly daily since the start.
I think it has gotten to the point where the two sides have simply demonized each other we have to realize that on both sides of the fence we are for the most part rational people.
One is reactionary, one is activly seeking out conflict
Gamergate goes out and seeks people to attack
"Social Justice Warriors" react to this and try to make the women that have been chased from their homes be able to return by trying to stop harrassment
Have they found out who it was that did so? You will not convince me that looking for witches to burn over the actions of a few is a wise course of action to take if that is what you are suggesting. No one is arguing that sending death threats is excusable but I do not see the sense in what it is you are trying to say.
Repurpousing accounts from #endfathersday and others from whatever the name of the hashtag that encouraged people to cut themselves in suppourt of Justin Bieber
Every gamergate video I have seen uses the word whore and slut more than a telegraph uses the word stop
If you havent seen these, Suprise! You are part of a MRA movement to drive women from gaming
If you have, you have no excuse
Edit: I mean it has been identified by a agency whose sole purpouse is identifying Hate Groups as a Hate Group. Stop fooling yourself
To play devils advocate...
The first part of your post referring to what happened before gamergate (at least that is my understanding if it was after then I admit I am wrong) shows there are trolls on 4 chan that want to rile people up... I don't think anyone would argue that.
As for your videos. Is it not possible that you only search out videos that already are agreeable to your view point? I haven't seen anyone referred to as a slut outside of one speaker. Now to be completely fair I am guilty of looking for videos that I agree it. It could be possible I have been willing blind and am more then interested in seeing the videos you are referring to.
What agency identified it as hate group?
Alright
I give up
Ive been running a marathon for days but for some weird reason the finish line keeps getting moved
So you win! Gamergate isnt terrible
I guess those death threats are just the natural byproduct of any reasonable movement
My goal is not to win nor to lose but to try and find some common ground to move forward if that is at all possible at this point.
I believe the core of gamergate is founded on ethics as much as that seems a running meme here...
I do not wish to make you pro or even not against it anymore but I want to try to understand your side of it as well. I would like to start seeing if not a end to it at least the recognition that the majority of each side isn't composed of monsters.
It literally started because nerds wanted to discuss Zoe Quinns vagaina
Like
That was the only thing to talk about
The "ethics" claim they were fighting against can and was disproven with a 5 minute google search
But apparently that was too hard so they continued on anyways
@Thom and @primallight, in addition to answering the question "Is Zoe Quinn lying about being doxxed," I have another question for y'all, if you don't mind:
Why do you think that the Gamergate movement was banned from 4chan and Reddit and pretty much everywhere else? I am unaware of any other movements that have been so thoroughly banished from Internet civilization (besides terrorists and child pornographers).
Do you believe there is something inherent with your movement that is irreconcilable with these Internet communities? Or do you believe there is some sort of conspiracy? Or what?
Actually, I agree with others that this won't work. It'll get hijacked.
Want an actual discussion? Start a forum that can be moderated so you get rid of the harassing chuckle fucks. Maybe a subreddit, named, I don't know, KotakuInAction. They're discussing ethics there, right?
Oh.
Never mind.
So yeah exactly whatever you think GG is about it's face to the public is a bunch of internet assholes who harass women and post their private information. That's a label that's never going to be shed.
It sure is interesting how little interest people take in ethics in gaming and journalism until one woman is alleged to have sex - by an ex who really comes off sounding like a psychopath, no less. I don't remember such a slew of outrage over YouTube reviewers being paid for positive reviews. Nor do I remember Notch being doxxed and driven from his home for "selling out" (that is about the extent of negativity I can recall seeing on that one) to Microsoft. People complained about product placement in both gaming and journalism, but how many PepsiCo or EA executives feared for their safety because of it?
People can be as upset about ethics all they want, but MAYBE it would be better to do so under a flag that actually has anything to do with ethics, and not one based on some creepy dudes being angry that a woman might have relations with anyone other than them.
You are now avoiding legidimate questions to deflect again
Actually you know what its funny
This happened that last 20 times too!
Then they vanish
That or they get really angry when they realize they have no justification for why they arent suppourting a terrible campaign anymore
Sorry, it's hard addressing like 20 people at once. What I'm trying to say is that again, the people who doxxed her are trolls. Why are you blaming the actions of a few trolls on a movement that is at least tens of thousands strong? I haven't seen any proof to that effect, but I'll take your word for it. What bothers me is how they nuked Reddit threads and started autobanning the topic everywhere on the internet. All I wanted was a peaceful discussion of the issues plaguing journalistic sites like Kotaku and RPS. Instead, banned.
Do you know what happened when ISIS turned into this really grotesque genocidal thing?
The FOX animated TV show Archer changed the name of their fictional agency that happened to be the same thing.
Huh. I don't watch that show so I didn't know this. I don't know if "neat" is the right phrase to use here. Maybe just "good on them."
I have mixed feelings on it, because in a way it's giving in to terrorism. But if the worst side effect is that terrorist organizations start naming themselves after US animated TV shows, I think we can survive.
I'd also like to take a moment, since we have some fresh voices in the conversation and you gentlemen have been quite polite, to ask you gents something that's been on our mind of late:
Since #gamergate seems to be taking something of a beating in the industry and the press of late, and you can't deny there's an awful lot of, shall we say, baggage involved with the name --
Why stick around? Since you're all about ethics in games journalism, why not ditch the hashtag and just go register www.VGJournoEthicsWatch.com and build a community around that idea without all the baggage? You could stop spending so much time convincing people you're not what you say you're not and focus on the issues you say are most important.
What's the dilly?
Well I can only speak for myself but I can at least give you one perspective.
Gamergate has numbers and it has achieved amazing results. For better or worse it has exposed several questionable things and is causing real changes in journalist practices to happen. While splitting from the hashtag offers no benefits. You list www.VGJournoEthicsWatch.com. Tell me if one person from gamergate made a death threat after switching to that sight perhaps lets say the very same person who made the first one. Would it not be just as tainted?
I do not condone the harassment nor will I shy away from the fact that it is happening. I do what I can to point out and report what I do see. This is the internet no one can get away from these things with groups of people. I am worried about how quick people from both sides want to jump on the band wagon and smear there opponents. Both gg and I don't know what to refer to it as anti-gg for simplicity sake have issued death threats to the otherside anonymously.
I believe the only way this will ever end is when cooler heads on both sides start to honestly talk to one another.
Can you list the amazing results please? Like specifically?
We have gotten several websites to review there journalistic practices. It is what I at least hoped to accomplished more or less though I would point to these
Kotaku made a change in it’s policies about Patreon
The Escapist changed it’s ethics policy
Breitbart listed who was on the GameJournoPros list
TFYC funded (unsure of exact amount via GG)
Intel pulled ads from Gamasutra
Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)
@Thom and @primallight, in addition to answering the question "Is Zoe Quinn lying about being doxxed," I have another question for y'all, if you don't mind:
Why do you think that the Gamergate movement was banned from 4chan and Reddit and pretty much everywhere else? I am unaware of any other movements that have been so thoroughly banished from Internet civilization (besides terrorists and child pornographers).
Do you believe there is something inherent with your movement that is irreconcilable with these Internet communities? Or do you believe there is some sort of conspiracy? Or what?
you know you could argue that radical feminists have taken over the video game industry while still acknowledging that harassment against women is real and terrible and has to be stopped
i wonder why they never do that
Not going to lie I am from the 8chan camp coming to take a look at the other side. Decrying it is pretty much 80% of what we do besides emails.
it seems to me that what you are doing is decrying individual instances of harassment while staunchly ignoring the elements of gaming culture which makes harassment possible
you're "against harassment" but you refuse to see a pattern in it, you refuse to acknowledge that there are ways our society encourage it. and whenever anyone tries to identify a root cause of harassment you get incredibly hostile.
if you say you're against harassment but refuse to do anything about the reasons people get harassed and actively impede anyone else's efforts to do so, you are de facto pro harassment
I don't see myself as getting hostile just looking for a starting point to a conversation.
In what way would you see society as a whole encouraging harassment? What is the root or what do you believe it is? For me I think it is very, very easy to latch on to out-liners to people who lack self control and do extremely foolish and terrible things and use it to paint a large group.
I honestly do not see female harassment very often in society and rarely if ever have I seen it tolerated. Again I don't want to howl at the moon here what do you believe is the cause of people getting harassed and what would be the best way to go about fixing it?
Yeah, this is male privilege.
Hold on, hold on, I no doubt expect that line is already causing your eyes to roll back in your head. Stay with me here on this, alright? It turns out I have male privilege too.
Privilege doesn't mean that everything in your life is peachy keen, or that you're a bad person, or anything like that. It's not an insult either.
But it does mean that you don't have to think about it.
You (and me!) can go to a con and never even once wonder if a drink is laced, or if someone's following you back to your room, or if con security will believe you when you say that someone grabbed your ass on the elevator and laughed about it. When I get hired at a game studio I don't have to worry that my boss thinks it's his due to date me.
I didn't pick those examples randomly, those are all real things that happened to four different female friends of mine in real life. The drink WAS laced, someone WAS trying to follow her back inside her room, someone DID molest her in the elevator, my (very smart and qualified!) friend DID get driven out of her job because her boss decided she owed him a fuck. And even when it isn't happening, they still have to constantly worry about it happening again. And I don't. And neither do you. Because we're men. And that's just big events, not the everyday kind of harassment that women have to put up with all the time.
So when one of us guys goes, "Well, personally I don't really think that harassment is a very big deal for women..." Well, that opinion really isn't worth much! It doesn't mean you as a person are worthless at all, but no your experiences are not weighted equally with women who say that it IS a problem, because you would not have that experience.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
You are now avoiding legidimate questions to deflect again
Actually you know what its funny
This happened that last 20 times too!
Then they vanish
That or they get really angry when they realize they have no justification for why they arent suppourting a terrible campaign anymore
Sorry, it's hard addressing like 20 people at once. What I'm trying to say is that again, the people who doxxed her are trolls. Why are you blaming the actions of a few trolls on a movement that is at least tens of thousands strong? I haven't seen any proof to that effect, but I'll take your word for it. What bothers me is how they nuked Reddit threads and started autobanning the topic everywhere on the internet. All I wanted was a peaceful discussion of the issues plaguing journalistic sites like Kotaku and RPS. Instead, banned.
If that isn't censorship, I don't know what is.
If they're trolls then why don't you make an official GamersGate website that you can use to keep the trolls out?
And it is censorship, but it's censorship in a privately owned website. You're not guaranteed free speech outside of public spaces.
because if you are, you wouldn't see casual sexism. it would be invisible to you.
My entire life I thought that the 'roles of men and women' were set in stone. I grew up Mormon, and I was taught how that was how things had to be!
And then it was pointed out to me once that no, no, not at all.
It's everywhere, all the time. I see it in professional SMITE streams, where the (female) streamer is badgered constantly about her voice, and her hair, and how "sexy they are, baby ". At work, when the customers ignore the (female) entertainment specialist to ask questions, only to be pointed back to her. Around the family, when they make fun of feminist activists because "why can't things stay the same?"
So when the gamergate movement says they aren't misogynist, I can't help but apply the movement's actions to what I've learned in life and say
i actually didn't think sam biddle's was a great tweet
like making fun of nerds for being virgins or calling out actual women as being sockpuppets, i think it is an example of poor behaviour that gets swept under the rug because the people doing it are on the right side
in general i think you have to be suspicious of any argument that sounds exactly like a gamergate argument, of which "well i was OBVIOUSLY joking" is a prime example
i definitely don't care very much about it or think it's at all a big deal, though
While I agree with you, I can also guarantee that there's a lot of indirect context that probably incited him to make such a tweet, ill-advised as it was. Things like seeing people say how Zoe Quinn deserved being doxxed because she cheated on her boyfriend, or saying that Anita Sarkeesian deserves all the harassment she gets because she's being mean to games, or whatever. You can find stuff on twitter like that right now without much leg work. Journalists probably get stuff like that sent to them directly, though, ie "why aren't you driving this lying cunt out of the industry already you must be CORRUPT."
That doesn't change the fact that it was a dumb tweet to make.
yeah, it's tone policing again
zoe can be as flippant as she likes, nobody on earth has the right to judge zoe for being flippant at this point. she is entitled to say that everyone who has ever looked at a video game is a warbling misogynist piss baby
sam biddle less so, because sam biddle hasn't, as far as i know, been directly affected by any of this
but i don't know enough about him
i certainly don't think he should be, like, fired from gawker
Can you explain why?
The thing I find so hard in all of this is that it seems people only do things wrong if they are on the side you don't support.
Well mainly because there aren't "two sides" here. There's GamerGate, and there's the rest of the world.
GamerGate, by design, has no leadership, which means anyone who wants to can join in the crowd and say "I am GamerGate" and no one else can say a damn thing about it, because there's no platform and no leadership.
But people opposed to GamerGate are a both a random assortment of people AND people who don't necessarily associate as a group.
For example, I'm against GamerGate because I don't like women being driven out of the industry. But a super anti-feminist MRA guy could hate gamergate because he thinks they're "Betas." Me and Fedoraman have nothing in common, except that we both hate gamergate (For very different reasons). Since I believe in social justice, I'm going to make efforts not to be an asshole to people on twitter about it. Because Fedoraman thinks Betas need to be told what's what, he might threaten GG people for the fun of it. I can say outright that Fedoraman, whoever he is, is a shitlord who I do not associate with in any way, and it's absolutely true.
But while I can't be held responsible for Fedoraman's actions, someone in GG does have a certain amount of responsibility for people taking their banner and using it for hate reasons. Because the people under that banner both willingly associate and refuse leadership. Which is a pretty toxic combination as we've found out. The hostile faction gets a free smokescreen from the nice people.
Alright but why?
Why is it you are immune to the very same accusation you throw?
This is what I do not honestly understand if someone claims to be for socail justice using your own example. They can not be used to smear someone else using the term social justice.
I might be a very slow person I admit that the last to get a joke and all if I simply change the terms social justice and gamergate what has changed?
I honestly still hope that at the end of this there can be some common ground but for that to start at the very least you have to hold yourself to the very standard you hold the people you view as against you.
I do not see gamergate talking about driving women from the industry and I have been following it nearly daily since the start.
I think it has gotten to the point where the two sides have simply demonized each other we have to realize that on both sides of the fence we are for the most part rational people.
One is reactionary, one is activly seeking out conflict
Gamergate goes out and seeks people to attack
"Social Justice Warriors" react to this and try to make the women that have been chased from their homes be able to return by trying to stop harrassment
Have they found out who it was that did so? You will not convince me that looking for witches to burn over the actions of a few is a wise course of action to take if that is what you are suggesting. No one is arguing that sending death threats is excusable but I do not see the sense in what it is you are trying to say.
Repurpousing accounts from #endfathersday and others from whatever the name of the hashtag that encouraged people to cut themselves in suppourt of Justin Bieber
Every gamergate video I have seen uses the word whore and slut more than a telegraph uses the word stop
If you havent seen these, Suprise! You are part of a MRA movement to drive women from gaming
If you have, you have no excuse
Edit: I mean it has been identified by a agency whose sole purpouse is identifying Hate Groups as a Hate Group. Stop fooling yourself
To play devils advocate...
The first part of your post referring to what happened before gamergate (at least that is my understanding if it was after then I admit I am wrong) shows there are trolls on 4 chan that want to rile people up... I don't think anyone would argue that.
As for your videos. Is it not possible that you only search out videos that already are agreeable to your view point? I haven't seen anyone referred to as a slut outside of one speaker. Now to be completely fair I am guilty of looking for videos that I agree it. It could be possible I have been willing blind and am more then interested in seeing the videos you are referring to.
What agency identified it as hate group?
Alright
I give up
Ive been running a marathon for days but for some weird reason the finish line keeps getting moved
So you win! Gamergate isnt terrible
I guess those death threats are just the natural byproduct of any reasonable movement
My goal is not to win nor to lose but to try and find some common ground to move forward if that is at all possible at this point.
I believe the core of gamergate is founded on ethics as much as that seems a running meme here...
I do not wish to make you pro or even not against it anymore but I want to try to understand your side of it as well. I would like to start seeing if not a end to it at least the recognition that the majority of each side isn't composed of monsters.
Then you believe incorrectly, as the near-100 pages of this thread can easily show. Hell, even if it was founded on concerns about "ethics", it has taken a HUGE right turn in the public eye, and if you want to support the movement, step one is damage control.
The only things ANYONE associated with the movement should say about the Big Three (Zoe, Brianna, Anita) is something along the lines of "The harassment these women are facing is terrible, and #gamergate does not support or condone these actions."
Instead, literally any person who claims to be associated with the movement tries to get around saying they "don't believe" that these women were doxxed, or threatened, or face terrible things from people within the movement.
They are being harrassed. They are being threatened. These are facts, and if you are concerned with games journalism, then you would accept these facts.
To argue that these women are somehow either unreliable witnesses, or somehow deserving of these attacks is bad journalism.
you know you could argue that radical feminists have taken over the video game industry while still acknowledging that harassment against women is real and terrible and has to be stopped
i wonder why they never do that
Not going to lie I am from the 8chan camp coming to take a look at the other side. Decrying it is pretty much 80% of what we do besides emails.
it seems to me that what you are doing is decrying individual instances of harassment while staunchly ignoring the elements of gaming culture which makes harassment possible
you're "against harassment" but you refuse to see a pattern in it, you refuse to acknowledge that there are ways our society encourage it. and whenever anyone tries to identify a root cause of harassment you get incredibly hostile.
if you say you're against harassment but refuse to do anything about the reasons people get harassed and actively impede anyone else's efforts to do so, you are de facto pro harassment
I don't see myself as getting hostile just looking for a starting point to a conversation.
In what way would you see society as a whole encouraging harassment? What is the root or what do you believe it is? For me I think it is very, very easy to latch on to out-liners to people who lack self control and do extremely foolish and terrible things and use it to paint a large group.
I honestly do not see female harassment very often in society and rarely if ever have I seen it tolerated. Again I don't want to howl at the moon here what do you believe is the cause of people getting harassed and what would be the best way to go about fixing it?
are you a man?
because if you are, you wouldn't see casual sexism. it would be invisible to you. i'm a man. i don't see it, particularly. but enough women have spoken out recently about it that i am forced to conclude either that casual sexism is a big problem or that there is a big conspiracy to lie about it.
(you might not be a man, of course, i've also spoken to women who don't perceive this hostility, but on balance more that do)
so i'm convinced that we live in a society that is, in many ways, hostile to women. there are a few reasons for this. men are raised to feel that they are entitled to women's bodies, that women owe them sex and are doing something wrong by not offering it to them. women are conditioned not to speak out against sexual harassment, so that when it happens, people don't find out about it. both genders are expected to live up to certain rigid expectations - men, to never show emotion or weakness, women, to value themselves by how much men value them. there's a lot of other stuff going on but that's the gist of it
the best way to fix this is to constantly speak out about this, to censure others for it and to look for it in your own behaviour. critiques like anita's are part of that, although i haven't watched anita's videos and i don't know if they're any good. by trying to get feminist critique out of video game media, then, you are making it impossible to speak out about any of the social issues that encourage men to harass women in the first place. hence, the charges that gamergate is pro-harassment
there's also the way it likes to blatantly ignore every women who's been harassed for opposing it but let's not get into that
There are several point I would like to make here and sorry for not getting to it in a more timely manner I can only type so fast.
I am a man though I question this invisible sexism you hear about. Let me preface this by saying I think it is alright to be offended in life. I however do not think things in life should be changed just because you were offended. I can not speak for how most people are raised except a small group of friends I have know since kindergarten but I have never witnessed a boy being taught that women exist only to please them nor that they are entitled to there body. I have not know any women either those I am friends with dated or worked with that have been conditioned against speaking out about sexual harassment if anything I have only seen the opposite. As for gender roles. Yeah that is a very real thing that I would like to see broken down and I have seen first hand how much crap you can get for something simple like being a stay at home dad.
For your last point I would recommend watching anita's videos they are a odd case study if nothing else. Parts of them make extremely solid and reasonable points but every once and a while she makes a very bizarre leap of logic that comes out of nowhere that at least in my opinion is a large part of why her videos are so hotly debated behind just the trolls.
So, hello, I'm a woman and a gamer. I was playing Warhammer Fantasy against a random opponent I found in a Games Workshop store. I rolled two sixes in a row. My opponent looked at me and said, "After this game, I am going to follow you home and rape you to death."
Do you think that is something that is so offensive that accomodations should be made to stop that behaviour? If yes, then we can agree that there are egregious sexist acts that demand society formulate some kind of response.
Now, the smaller you get, the more difficult it is to make those sort of claims and actions. When that man said that to me, he was escorted out of the store by security and spoke to police. This was a Notable Incident that was treated with Immediate Action.
However, when another player walked up to my fiance and said "Oh my god, you're... you're dating her? You're a fucking hero, man. I wish I could have a gamer girl." This was an act of sexism. Compared to the above example, it's practically a compliment. However, it's still something that removes my personhood and makes me an object. I find it kind of gross. In an instance like this, we would not call in the police. However, we could work on education that explains why that kind of thing, despite being meant as a compliment, is kind of gross and unbecoming.
Unfortunately, when we try to talk about these social issues, like through an educational YouTube series or a blog post, we tend to get harassed, doxxed, threatened, and insulted.
This is fucking horrible and also the person that your hashtag is forever associated with.
Don't drop it, fine, but you don't get to disown the monsters.
I'd also like to take a moment, since we have some fresh voices in the conversation and you gentlemen have been quite polite, to ask you gents something that's been on our mind of late:
Since #gamergate seems to be taking something of a beating in the industry and the press of late, and you can't deny there's an awful lot of, shall we say, baggage involved with the name --
Why stick around? Since you're all about ethics in games journalism, why not ditch the hashtag and just go register www.VGJournoEthicsWatch.com and build a community around that idea without all the baggage? You could stop spending so much time convincing people you're not what you say you're not and focus on the issues you say are most important.
What's the dilly?
Well I can only speak for myself but I can at least give you one perspective.
Gamergate has numbers and it has achieved amazing results. For better or worse it has exposed several questionable things and is causing real changes in journalist practices to happen. While splitting from the hashtag offers no benefits. You list www.VGJournoEthicsWatch.com. Tell me if one person from gamergate made a death threat after switching to that sight perhaps lets say the very same person who made the first one. Would it not be just as tainted?
I do not condone the harassment nor will I shy away from the fact that it is happening. I do what I can to point out and report what I do see. This is the internet no one can get away from these things with groups of people. I am worried about how quick people from both sides want to jump on the band wagon and smear there opponents. Both gg and I don't know what to refer to it as anti-gg for simplicity sake have issued death threats to the otherside anonymously.
I believe the only way this will ever end is when cooler heads on both sides start to honestly talk to one another.
Well, I specified a website as distinct from a hashtag because it offers the opportunity to actively police unsavory elements from your movement. Right now you guys are here because you don't like being associated with misogynists and terrorists who threaten murder and mayhem to silence critics. If you rankle at the thought of being compared to such a person, consider that as long as Gamergate refuses to move beyond a hashtag, it will always have those problems. There will always be jackasses who hurl abuse in your name and hide amongst you, using you as a shield. You can say "but it's not me!" but what you can't do is ever really distance yourself from them completely because there's nothing stopping another jackass from slapping on the hashtag and going to town.
With a website and a forum and a structure you could actually formally ostracize the jackasses, ban them from your movement, and focus on the issues. Nobody controls a hashtag, but you could control a community and build it into something positive. You'd have the power to fight the jackasses instead of trying to convince the rest of the world that you aren't one.
Wouldn't that be more productive for everyone?
How would a website be different from a hashtag? Would they not simply be able to make a account then do the exact same thing? Or do you believe banning the account after the threat was launched would be enough to head off everything else that comes with it?
To me it seems to be the exact same issue as the hashtag unless I have overlooked something in your post of misunderstood?
The thing is @Thorn, since there is no leadership in the movement (as you said yourself), then there is no way to disconnect those who harass women to those who don't. Who gets to say who is and isn't part of gamergate? It seems to me the only requirement is for a person to openly support and associate with the hashtag.
Like you, how did you become part of the movement? What steps do you think are required for a person to become part of it? And how do we know that the steps you took to become part of the movement is actually legit, since there's no leadership to dictate it?
Like I said, I became part of this movement after getting shadowbanned on Reddit. And then looking into the matter myself. I was already aware of churnalism and other unsavory journalistic practices, but the dirty laundry of game journalists was too much.
As to the "steps" I took, I started following people on twitter and listening to interviews. That's about it. The MSM narrative being pushed is particularly heinous, but nothing I haven't seen before. I nurse a deep distrust of most American news outlets, preferring to get my news from The Economist, among other sources.
I agree it's horrible, but short of the GamerGate harassment patrol, there is little we can do to stop it. Again, stop blaming the actions of a few trolls on the whole.
So if following people on twitter and listening to interviews is how you identified yourself as a part of gamergate, how do we know that the people who harassed women didn't do the same thing? Since the bar for becoming a gamergater is so low, it seems like anybody could become one. So if they did do that, would they be part of gamergate? I just don't see how you can so very clearly say that the harassers aren't part of the movement when the bar is so low, and when the greatest effect the movement has had, creating a hostile space for women, is because of these harassers.
And honestly, the harassment gaters are experiencing, as shown in that tumblr, is nowhere near as bad as the sustained harassment suffered by Zoe, Anita, etc. I wouldn't want them to get harassed too, but that still doesn't justify the harassment they've dealt. People leaving their homes, leaving the industry, is exclusive to non-gamergaters.
because if you are, you wouldn't see casual sexism. it would be invisible to you.
My entire life I thought that the 'roles of men and women' were set in stone. I grew up Mormon, and I was taught how that was how things had to be!
And then it was pointed out to me once that no, no, not at all.
It's everywhere, all the time. I see it in professional SMITE streams, where the (female) streamer is badgered constantly about her voice, and her hair, and how "sexy they are, baby ". At work, when the customers ignore the (female) entertainment specialist to ask questions, only to be pointed back to her. Around the family, when they make fun of feminist activists because "why can't things stay the same?"
So when the gamergate movement says they aren't misogynist, I can't help but apply the movement's actions to what I've learned in life and say
well
that's completely untrue.
I agree with this. Being a man doesn't mean you don't notice casual sexism. It means you don't have to worry about it. But if you're actually you know, somewhat empathic about how people who aren't like you might feel about things, you'll notice it all the god damn time.
You are now avoiding legidimate questions to deflect again
Actually you know what its funny
This happened that last 20 times too!
Then they vanish
That or they get really angry when they realize they have no justification for why they arent suppourting a terrible campaign anymore
Sorry, it's hard addressing like 20 people at once. What I'm trying to say is that again, the people who doxxed her are trolls. Why are you blaming the actions of a few trolls on a movement that is at least tens of thousands strong? I haven't seen any proof to that effect, but I'll take your word for it. What bothers me is how they nuked Reddit threads and started autobanning the topic everywhere on the internet. All I wanted was a peaceful discussion of the issues plaguing journalistic sites like Kotaku and RPS. Instead, banned.
If that isn't censorship, I don't know what is.
so she's not lying, then
she is telling the truth about being driven from her home by a misogynist hate campaign
if that is indeed the case, you will have to excuse me for choosing to care more about that then i do about corruption in video game journalism
i would also like to refer you back to my posts about how this is not just an isolated incident of misogyny, but a symptom of an underlying problem, and any attempt to pretend there is no underlying problem only gets in the way of solving the problem
I do not wish to make you pro or even not against it anymore but I want to try to understand your side of it as well. I would like to start seeing if not a end to it at least the recognition that the majority of each side isn't composed of monsters.
I don't really buy into the "sides" narrative. It's great that you think that you have a side in this discussion, but the "other side" is literally the rest of the world. And the rest of the world has already passed their judgment, whether you like it or not.
That you are a man who doesn't see this invisible sexism... that's kind of the whole point? It's invisible to you because you are a man. But you can choose to see it, if you really wanted to. That's the difference that you should take away from this, if you take anything away at all from it.
+16
ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
...aaaaaaand that's a wrap.
This thread did not go nearly as poorly as it could've, but all the useful conversation that can be mined here is pretty much depleted. We are hitting bedrock, and it's time to turn in our collective pickaxe.
Thanks to the bulk of you who managed to discuss a pretty touchy subject with courtesy and restraint.
~fin~
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Posts
You do realize that casual sexism and objectification isn't generally something that is like... traditionally "taught."
Like there's no objectifying women 101. It's something that is absorbed over time from the broader culture, and isn't always necessarily noticeable unless you're cognizant of it. That's the reason why Anita Sarkeesian is doing the work she's doing.
My goal is not to win nor to lose but to try and find some common ground to move forward if that is at all possible at this point.
I believe the core of gamergate is founded on ethics as much as that seems a running meme here...
I do not wish to make you pro or even not against it anymore but I want to try to understand your side of it as well. I would like to start seeing if not a end to it at least the recognition that the majority of each side isn't composed of monsters.
Actually, I agree with others that this won't work. It'll get hijacked.
Want an actual discussion? Start a forum that can be moderated so you get rid of the harassing chuckle fucks. Maybe a subreddit, named, I don't know, KotakuInAction. They're discussing ethics there, right?
Oh.
Never mind.
3DS FC: 0817-3759-2788
So, hello, I'm a woman and a gamer. I was playing Warhammer Fantasy against a random opponent I found in a Games Workshop store. I rolled two sixes in a row. My opponent looked at me and said, "After this game, I am going to follow you home and rape you to death."
Do you think that is something that is so offensive that accomodations should be made to stop that behaviour? If yes, then we can agree that there are egregious sexist acts that demand society formulate some kind of response.
Now, the smaller you get, the more difficult it is to make those sort of claims and actions. When that man said that to me, he was escorted out of the store by security and spoke to police. This was a Notable Incident that was treated with Immediate Action.
However, when another player walked up to my fiance and said "Oh my god, you're... you're dating her? You're a fucking hero, man. I wish I could have a gamer girl." This was an act of sexism. Compared to the above example, it's practically a compliment. However, it's still something that removes my personhood and makes me an object. I find it kind of gross. In an instance like this, we would not call in the police. However, we could work on education that explains why that kind of thing, despite being meant as a compliment, is kind of gross and unbecoming.
Unfortunately, when we try to talk about these social issues, like through an educational YouTube series or a blog post, we tend to get harassed, doxxed, threatened, and insulted.
so i've been hearing a lot about this zoe quinn person
what i want to know is this. is she lying about being doxxed or isn't she? the people demand answers!
Remember years ago that Everquest dragon that was unkillable, but could be beaten my many hours of what can only be called a mockery of normal gameplay, and in doing so you disable the whole raid for the entire server but it doesn't matter because the refs just move the goalposts as you line up to kick anyway?
I assume you mean that dragon.
Sexism isn't a class taught in school
Victim blaming isn't a course in college
These are phenomenon endemic to society that need to be identified and spoken about in order to be eradicated
Do you get your keys out before you approach you car in a dark parking lot? Do you cross the street when walking alone at night and you see a guy or group of guys coming towards you? Do you check your drink or keep it in your sight at all times at parties?
There are many things women deal with on a daily basis that are the result of institutional and societal sexism (which is not as bad as its historically been but is still present) that might be very hard to understand from a male perspective if you don't stop to really think about it
there's gonna be a quick time event isn't there....
Thanks all!
On my sleeve, let the runway start
If the core is about ethics then why did you bring up Anita in your last post? Why is she involved in any way? She's not a journalist, why is she brought up at all?
It literally started because nerds wanted to discuss Zoe Quinns vagaina
Like
That was the only thing to talk about
The "ethics" claim they were fighting against can and was disproven with a 5 minute google search
But apparently that was too hard so they continued on anyways
it's almost as if they all secretly think that, but don't want to say it, because deep down they know it's sexist!
Why do you think that the Gamergate movement was banned from 4chan and Reddit and pretty much everywhere else? I am unaware of any other movements that have been so thoroughly banished from Internet civilization (besides terrorists and child pornographers).
Do you believe there is something inherent with your movement that is irreconcilable with these Internet communities? Or do you believe there is some sort of conspiracy? Or what?
So yeah exactly whatever you think GG is about it's face to the public is a bunch of internet assholes who harass women and post their private information. That's a label that's never going to be shed.
People can be as upset about ethics all they want, but MAYBE it would be better to do so under a flag that actually has anything to do with ethics, and not one based on some creepy dudes being angry that a woman might have relations with anyone other than them.
Sorry, it's hard addressing like 20 people at once. What I'm trying to say is that again, the people who doxxed her are trolls. Why are you blaming the actions of a few trolls on a movement that is at least tens of thousands strong? I haven't seen any proof to that effect, but I'll take your word for it. What bothers me is how they nuked Reddit threads and started autobanning the topic everywhere on the internet. All I wanted was a peaceful discussion of the issues plaguing journalistic sites like Kotaku and RPS. Instead, banned.
If that isn't censorship, I don't know what is.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
We have gotten several websites to review there journalistic practices. It is what I at least hoped to accomplished more or less though I would point to these
Kotaku made a change in it’s policies about Patreon
The Escapist changed it’s ethics policy
Breitbart listed who was on the GameJournoPros list
TFYC funded (unsure of exact amount via GG)
Intel pulled ads from Gamasutra
Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)
Obviously, it's because of journalistic ethics.
Yeah, this is male privilege.
Hold on, hold on, I no doubt expect that line is already causing your eyes to roll back in your head. Stay with me here on this, alright? It turns out I have male privilege too.
Privilege doesn't mean that everything in your life is peachy keen, or that you're a bad person, or anything like that. It's not an insult either.
But it does mean that you don't have to think about it.
You (and me!) can go to a con and never even once wonder if a drink is laced, or if someone's following you back to your room, or if con security will believe you when you say that someone grabbed your ass on the elevator and laughed about it. When I get hired at a game studio I don't have to worry that my boss thinks it's his due to date me.
I didn't pick those examples randomly, those are all real things that happened to four different female friends of mine in real life. The drink WAS laced, someone WAS trying to follow her back inside her room, someone DID molest her in the elevator, my (very smart and qualified!) friend DID get driven out of her job because her boss decided she owed him a fuck. And even when it isn't happening, they still have to constantly worry about it happening again. And I don't. And neither do you. Because we're men. And that's just big events, not the everyday kind of harassment that women have to put up with all the time.
So when one of us guys goes, "Well, personally I don't really think that harassment is a very big deal for women..." Well, that opinion really isn't worth much! It doesn't mean you as a person are worthless at all, but no your experiences are not weighted equally with women who say that it IS a problem, because you would not have that experience.
And it is censorship, but it's censorship in a privately owned website. You're not guaranteed free speech outside of public spaces.
My entire life I thought that the 'roles of men and women' were set in stone. I grew up Mormon, and I was taught how that was how things had to be!
And then it was pointed out to me once that no, no, not at all.
It's everywhere, all the time. I see it in professional SMITE streams, where the (female) streamer is badgered constantly about her voice, and her hair, and how "sexy they are, baby
So when the gamergate movement says they aren't misogynist, I can't help but apply the movement's actions to what I've learned in life and say
well
that's completely untrue.
Then you believe incorrectly, as the near-100 pages of this thread can easily show. Hell, even if it was founded on concerns about "ethics", it has taken a HUGE right turn in the public eye, and if you want to support the movement, step one is damage control.
The only things ANYONE associated with the movement should say about the Big Three (Zoe, Brianna, Anita) is something along the lines of "The harassment these women are facing is terrible, and #gamergate does not support or condone these actions."
Instead, literally any person who claims to be associated with the movement tries to get around saying they "don't believe" that these women were doxxed, or threatened, or face terrible things from people within the movement.
They are being harrassed. They are being threatened. These are facts, and if you are concerned with games journalism, then you would accept these facts.
To argue that these women are somehow either unreliable witnesses, or somehow deserving of these attacks is bad journalism.
You want a cross section of the front page of #gamersgate posts on twitter?
want to make a wager on how many are actually about journalism?
This is fucking horrible and also the person that your hashtag is forever associated with.
Don't drop it, fine, but you don't get to disown the monsters.
How would a website be different from a hashtag? Would they not simply be able to make a account then do the exact same thing? Or do you believe banning the account after the threat was launched would be enough to head off everything else that comes with it?
To me it seems to be the exact same issue as the hashtag unless I have overlooked something in your post of misunderstood?
So if following people on twitter and listening to interviews is how you identified yourself as a part of gamergate, how do we know that the people who harassed women didn't do the same thing? Since the bar for becoming a gamergater is so low, it seems like anybody could become one. So if they did do that, would they be part of gamergate? I just don't see how you can so very clearly say that the harassers aren't part of the movement when the bar is so low, and when the greatest effect the movement has had, creating a hostile space for women, is because of these harassers.
And honestly, the harassment gaters are experiencing, as shown in that tumblr, is nowhere near as bad as the sustained harassment suffered by Zoe, Anita, etc. I wouldn't want them to get harassed too, but that still doesn't justify the harassment they've dealt. People leaving their homes, leaving the industry, is exclusive to non-gamergaters.
PSN: jrrl_absent
I agree with this. Being a man doesn't mean you don't notice casual sexism. It means you don't have to worry about it. But if you're actually you know, somewhat empathic about how people who aren't like you might feel about things, you'll notice it all the god damn time.
so she's not lying, then
she is telling the truth about being driven from her home by a misogynist hate campaign
if that is indeed the case, you will have to excuse me for choosing to care more about that then i do about corruption in video game journalism
i would also like to refer you back to my posts about how this is not just an isolated incident of misogyny, but a symptom of an underlying problem, and any attempt to pretend there is no underlying problem only gets in the way of solving the problem
That you are a man who doesn't see this invisible sexism... that's kind of the whole point? It's invisible to you because you are a man. But you can choose to see it, if you really wanted to. That's the difference that you should take away from this, if you take anything away at all from it.
This thread did not go nearly as poorly as it could've, but all the useful conversation that can be mined here is pretty much depleted. We are hitting bedrock, and it's time to turn in our collective pickaxe.
Thanks to the bulk of you who managed to discuss a pretty touchy subject with courtesy and restraint.
~fin~