#GamerGate and #NotYourShield - v- Social Justice Warriors

[DanaC]

I am really getting tried of this whole debacle.

For those not familiar with this clusterfuck of misogyny and hate - it seems to have started when the ex-boyfriend of a smalltime female games blgger/indie dev posted an 'expose' claiming that she had slept with journalists to get good reviews of her very, very tiny game.

The GamerGaters claim they are fighting against corruprtion in games journalism - but they only focus on female targets - primarily women who have had the sheer affrontery to criticise games and games companies for their portrayal of women in gaming.

Death threats, rape threats, personal details posted online - phonecalls to family members, elaborate rape fantasies complete with phoshopped pics of the women as rape victims - bomb threats.

One ofthe women (Anita Sarkeesian) posts a youtibe video series called Tropes -v- Women which examines games from a feminist perspective. She recently was supposed to give a talk at a university in Utah - and had to pull out because an anonymous fuckwit sent a threat that if she spoke there would be a mass shooting.

The other thing that seems to have angered GamerGaters was an article titled 'Gamers are Dead'. A provocative title to be sure - but it wasn't actually decrying gamers - it was suggesting that the traditional image of the gamer is out of date - and that the gaming industry is being slow to recognise that women and ethnic minorities are a part of the gaming community.

Any site carrying or even linking to that article was bombarded by GamerGaters - anyone advertising on sites carrying or linking to that article was bombarded by GamerGaters. More death threats, more doxxing.

Three women have had to leave their homes because of credible threats.

There seems a lot of evidence (chatlogs etc) that much of this has been cooked up by 4chan members - as an active campaign against these women. In their chatlogs they talk tactics - always say it's about journalistic integrity - use the #NotYourShield tag and pretend to be a minority or a woman supporting #GamerGate to make it look less like an assault on female gamers. The systamatic use of the term SJW (Social Justice warriors). And most importantly a stated goal that these women (named in the thread) should be forced out of the industry.

It's really, really pissing me off now. every time I read about gaming - it's this.

I've talked before on here about how I feel about gaming and the way as a female gamer I get frustrated with the sexism in gaming culture - being told girls aren't proper gamers, games being written and marketed in a way that makes them seem exclusively male (very few female characters and when they do appear they are either incidental or if they are playable they're the only ones on the battlefield fighting in their underwear).

Now it's gone full on anti woman in some traditional gaming circles. I've read some of the chat logs. I;ve watched some of the GamerGate vids on youtube - they made my skin crawl. They made me feel hated. They made me feel like I had no business playing a game like CoD unless I was prepared to stfu and never speak again about what I want in gaming.

This is a concerted assault to silence any and all who might criticise the lack of representation of women or ethnic minorities in games. Sites have been effectively shut down by DDoS tactics. Advertisers have pulled out of sites because they don't want to be targeted with a mass twitter,facebook etc campaign. Bloggers have been silenced.

And if there is any doubt that this about misogyny not journalistic integrity - one of them made a game in which the object is to beat Anita Sarkeesian bloody. With photoshopped pic of her face getting more and more mangled. And all the women who have been targeted have had their emails bombarded with images of them being raped.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...-Women-Creator
http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/pos...taliban-tropes
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/the-sec...stop-progress/
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/0...their-irc-log/