Let’s begin by clearly declaring our outliers here: Today’s column is not meant to take a side, either for or against the hashtag collective that is #GamerGate. Now since this is an opinion column, I shall share my own standpoint shortly. But first let’s establish who this article is for.
A lot of people ask me, “Cavie, you beautiful creature, what is this #GamerGate thing all about, and why does it have so many people so angry?” To which I typically respond, “Well, most noble and scholarly friend, #GamerGate is a whole mess of things depending on who you are, and you should most certainly stay out of it. But if you really must know…” See the thing is, there are a lot of people who think that #GamerGate is this or that, typically based on what people close to them have portrayed it as, or what they have personally been exposed to. These could be very different things as you can expect. Here’s the thing though: There are a lot of other people who claim indifference, who are simply not willing to have the conversation, but nonetheless condemn as if they know what they’re talking about — watch these people run to the comments without reading past the titles. I personally detest that level of ignorance, and I want to firmly establish a common ground upon which we can all tread. One established mostly on verifiable facts, sound reporting, and other content that I feel deserves to be shared (note: not necessarily fact, but worth sharing). It is therefore up to you to decide whether or not you feel this is fair and equal representation, or a biased perspective.
If you’d like my personal opinion of #GamerGate, then you’re going to have to read through all of this — or do the lazy thing and scroll to the end.
Popular Articles
Recent Articles
The 5 Worst Controllers Within The Evolution Of Gaming | 3 days ago
Review: Dying Light Is Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts | 5 days ago
Godus Isn’t The Only Kickstarter Disappointment, Here Are A Few More | 1 week ago
Review: Dragon Ball XenoVerse Is Comfortably Over Nine Thousand | 2 weeks ago
Let’s Talk About The Rumoured PS4 Update | 22 mins ago
GTA Online’s Heists Steal A Chunk Of Storage Space | 1 hour ago
Why Was Batman: Arkham Knight Rated Mature? Let’s Find Out | 2 hours ago
Life, The Universe And Gaming: On #GamerGate, Feminism, Ethics, Harassment, And Working Together | 3 hours ago
Throughout this column, I am going to do my best to address both sides of the argument, with the hope being to allow for as much fair coverage as is humanly possible. Please work with me on this, it’s quite difficult to be 100% objective, but I will give it my best shot.
So what exactly is #GamerGate?
The pro-#GamerGate side would have you believe that #GamerGate is a consumer revolt intended to fight corruption in the games industry by bringing writers and websites to task for unethical and questionable practices. The anti-#GamerGate side would have you believe that it is a hate campaign of harassment which is a product of internet misogyny and exists as a form of resistance to change in gamer culture. These are two very loaded sides, and I believe that each has an element of truth to them. If I look at the pro-#GamerGate side, I can quite easily see that yes, there are unethical practices in the games industry, but if I look at the anti-#GamerGate side, I do wonder why it’s mostly women who are being brought to task for this.
We must then also consider the point from which all of this madness spawned, and that’s a tweet by Adam Baldwin with the hashtag #GamerGate, in which he linked to two videos that covered The Quinnspiracy Saga from August last year. The pro-#GamerGate side would insist that the Quinnspiracy is a forgotten episode, and that the focus has since shifted towards ethics in games journalism, while the anti-#GamerGate side would argue that anything born of harassment is still, in effect, a form of harassment, and therefore #GamerGate cannot ever be considered anything more than a hate campaign as a result. The question is, is that a fair assessment? After all, are all Muslims condemned for the acts of Islamic extremists? Were non-white Apartheid freedom fighters condemned for their acts of rape and terrorism? And what about all the harassment that has been going on for years before this? Perhaps let’s break it down a bit…
Let’s talk about harassment on the internet
Hi, my name is Caveshen Rajman, I am a twenty-something, straight ethnic male who has been a victim of internet harassment. I have received death threats for not liking a game (Halo 3) that others liked, I have been asked to kill myself, and been accused of being a sad, lonely virgin for many years of my life, just for expressing an opinion on the internet. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to go and fuck (or kill) myself whenever I tried to communicate on internet forums (some local), I was even investigated, and had personal family details revealed, by a man who claimed to be a police inspector, who took issue with my advocating the downloading of TV series from the internet. Most recently, I expressed a dislikeable opinion about a game called Destiny, and had my Xbox LIVE, Gmail, and Twitter hacked (they had different passwords) by angry internet users who didn’t like what I had to say about the game. This is over and above being very publicly lambasted by other websites, users, and even some of my own team members at the time.
Because of the anonymity of the internet, you are quite prone to being harassed. This is just how it has been online, and nobody feels that more, than women. That’s not to say that men don’t feel it too, but really, a woman with a strong opinion on the internet is the target of just the worst kinds of harassment and discrimination. We’ll discuss the very necessary conversation of feminism in a moment, but let’s first get one thing abundantly clear: Women on the internet have a really fucking tough time. That’s not me “white knighting” as they say, because honestly I also feel that a lot of women prey off this idea and throw themselves directly into the line of fire unnecessarily, and receive abuse, effectively for themselves being abusers. These are however outliers, and many women simply do not ask for abuse, but nonetheless receive it. Either in the form of threats, disingenuous disagreement based purely on gender, scepticism, and of course, sexual harassment. And in the wake of #GamerGate (had to), the anti-#GamerGate side has argued once again that harassment and hate has been a core element of #GamerGate. Let’s have a look at that in the form of tweets I found online:
Threats from #GamerGate
Threats from Anti-#GamerGate
Men who were threatened
So you see, nobody is really innocent here, and everyone is a victim in some way. That’s not to undermine the very real and dangerous threat to Zoe Quinn’s life last year during the Quinnspiracy, something that I wholly condemned back then, and still do now. What happened, and continues to happen, is borderline barbaric and uncalled for. My only intention here is to establish three things:
Internet harassment has been on the internet for as long as I can remember, and is going nowhere any time soon.
Neither side is innocent, or not guilty of themselves being harassers, as has been demonstrated.
The focus is abundantly on females, whether it’s the argument that only females are guilty of corruption, the bewildering number of female harassment cases I’ve seen online, or the disregarding of males who are also being harassed, albeit admittedly not nearly as much as females are.
So to summarise: Women get harassed, whether they are pro- or anti-#GamerGate, yet #GamerGate appears to be universally condemned for it, even by people outside of the gaming industry. In much the same way that Grand Theft Auto once made all of us killers.
Now let’s talk about the other half of the harassment…
Feminism in modern culture
I am no expert on feminism, and I make no claims to being otherwise. In the past, I have written articles in support of women and representation in gaming quite a bit, but of late I found myself slightly more critical. Why? Because for the first time I actually engaged it, and I discovered that there is such a thing, as with anything, as the ‘wrong kind’ of feminist.
Now that’s not to say I follow the sentiment that feminism is killing gaming. No, of course not. I find that sentiment to be frankly absurd. I do however see that based on who you are, one feminist is the “right kind” and the other is the “attention seeking” kind, with very few exceptions in between, and this is constant across all sides. This, friends, is more of an argument in semantics, much in the same way actual feminism is. Feminism has permeated gaming and is here to stay, and so along with that must come the copious amounts of discussion surrounding feminism. After all, where do we draw the line between empowerment, and reverse discrimination? Personally, I am pro-equality, and that means equal rights for all. To see some women spoken down upon for not being the same kind of feminist as another is, quite honestly, incredible to behold.
On the anti-#GamerGate side are feminists the likes of Leigh Alexander and Anita Sarkeesian, while on the pro-#GamerGate side are feminists the likes of Liana Kerzner and Christina Sommers. The latter two have, thus far, employed the use of research and academic references to explain their standpoints. The former have dealt more with opinion and personal research. Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency videos in particular have become above reproach to many who feel that critique is necessary in gaming, but do not allow that critique to, itself be critiqued, something that nonetheless deserves its own voice.
And when all of this is said and done, where is the other representation? We always hear of representation for the LGBT community, and of course people of colour, but how are they being represented. On the #GamerGate side, you have #NotYourShield, a subsection of #GamerGate formed from women, LGBT members, and people of colour who stand with #GamerGate against what they perceive to be another attack on them from privileged white people who want to speak on their behalf. Or, this video:
On the anti-#GamerGate side, during my research I found very little to indicate that it was about anything other than stopping the harassment of women on the internet, which as I’ve said, does happen and is not something that can be easily dismissed, nor should it be. From my own research, I have struggled to find many people of colour, or LGBT community members who have argued against #GamerGate, and the best it’s come to has been a few ethnic members who are unwilling to concede that #GamerGate is comprised of anything other than privileged white males, and their indoctrinated, sexism-internalising allies. It was quite telling to see the frequency of non-white gamers who flocked behind #GamerGate however:
Which then brings me to my next point, one that does indeed reflect the opinion of Leigh Alexander in her article entitled ‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over. albeit in a very circular fashion, and without the assumption that all of this is happening due to resistance to change in the current way of things. I believe that as gaming matures and permeates the mainstream, it will gain the discussion points of the mainstream. The likes of equal representation and ethical treatment, as well as corruption and questionable behaviour. Equal representation of women, for example, is a broad and diverse issue across all subcultures of humanity, not just gaming, and not just entertainment. Last year’s Fappening for example, had nothing to do with gaming. To go further into our daily living, women are forced to either take the surnames of their fathers or their husbands when married. In many situations women are paid less, just by virtue of being women.
To cut a long story short, gaming has inherited the contentious issues of our modern world, and therefore #GamerGate is the first real hot debate to have come from that. In other words…
It’s all political
You might have seen words like “SJW” and “MRA” used a lot on the internet recently. Social, justice and warrior, are all seemingly okay words, right? What about men’s, rights, and activists? So why then are both these terms used negatively, and in direct opposition to each other in gaming?
Throughout my research on this piece, I found that many pro- and anti-#GamerGate discussions occurred around other terms such as anarchist, left-wing, libertarian, and so on. These are political terms, and I believe #GamerGate to be the first political war in gaming. This has a few very big connotations, as follows:
Humanity is accustomed to fighting revolutions for change. If there is change, there is typically some destructive element that happens to bring about that change. In the absence of real wars and conflict, we have turned on ourselves and our way of life, and as a result, fundamentally split ourselves into factions based on beliefs and opinions. This is abundantly apparent with the #GamerGate saga.
The #GamerGate sides have become their own entities now. In other words, if you are anti-#GamerGate and one day start espousing pro-#GamerGate views, or vice versa, your respective side will take you to task for it, and your own followers and friends will turn on you, call you a hypocrite, and metaphorically burn you at the stake. Why? Because most members on the two sides are no longer bothered with having an actual discussion but are rather obsessed with firmly establishing that one side is completely right, while the other is completely wrong. Expectedly problematic.
Despite what anyone says to the contrary, neither side is going to go anywhere any time soon. This is a direct result of the above-mentioned idea that both sides are now entities on their own.
There will always be propaganda, because each side wants to win more supporters to its own cause. Therefore you will see misrepresented or falsified sentiments, and will be goaded into throwing your support to one or the other side, and if you should choose to remain neutral, you will be the target of both sides should you ever choose to involve yourself — either you will be a coward who is condoning harassment, or a coward who is unwilling to fight the corruption.
The entire thing got so political that it even found its way onto the David Pakman show over on YouTube, in which David Pakman interviewed four people, two pro-#GamerGate, two anti-#GamerGate, and eventually rendered his final verdict. Here are the rather lengthy videos if you’re interested in them. I strongly encourage watching them as they provide some excellent examples of the mentalities, personalities, and overall views of each party.
Brianna Wu
Total Biscuit
Arthur Chu
Liana Kerzner
David Pakman’s Final Verdict on #GamerGate
An unsurprising albeit unfortunately fair resolution to the entire thing, all agreed?
Now let’s talk about ethics
Ethical practices on the internet have always seemed like something of an oxymoron to me. After all, it’s the internet. There is so much possibility for misrepresentation and dishonesty through anonymity that how can we ever take anything at face value without questioning its integrity. Related to #GamerGate, how many examples of harassment above were from people who claimed they were part of #GamerGate, on either side, and how many were just internet trolls? And how many claims of harassment were categorically false? It’s really, really difficult to tell for certain.
Now that might sound like a harsh thing to say, but consider that if police reports were filed, then the police would have encouraged the involved parties not to speak publicly after filing a statement. If those parties then went public anyway, who’s to say it wasn’t for personal attention? The “crying wolf” accusation is constantly disregarded in favour of the sanctity of the victim, and this would need to change or more people will falsely accuse others and get away with it. Is it fair to call for evidence of claims made? It ought to be. The burden of proof should always lie with the accuser, should it not? Unfortunately it’s a tricky situation because you then undermine the real victims, and we never, ever want to stoop to that level. It’s quite tough in the end.
We must now come to the topic of “ethics in games journalism” which is something that the pro-#GamerGate side claims to fight for, to the point of being made fun of by others. Ethics in games journalism has been a point of contention for a while now, albeit never to this extent. It has certainly been growing, and has come a long way from the time when Doritosgate happened, and the internet piled on Geoff Keighley. From then on, the discussion of what constitutes actual games journalism and what is simply glorified blogging has been raging, hitting its high point late last year when a bunch of websites were brought to task for what gamers considered to be unethical practices.
But here’s the thing… you cannot fight the media. The power of the media is strong, and what first started out as silence eventually morphed into attacks on #GamerGate, despite the best efforts of those involved. Some gaming sites did their part to portray an equal amount of exposure for both sides — we did our part to represent the pro-#GamerGate and anti-#GamerGate sides as well — but for the most part if you see an article on #GamerGate on a popular gaming site, it will be labelled from the anti-#GamerGate perspective, i.e. a hate campaign that focuses on harassing women.
If you consider that #GamerGate is effectively taking the very same gaming websites, as well as game developers, to task, it kind of makes sense doesn’t it?
The blatant immaturity of it all…
The one question I’ve asked myself about all of this is, if the common argument across both sides of this saga is that gaming is not something to be taken so seriously, then why are the issues of representation and ethical practice such massively contentious topics?
The #GamerGate side will jump on anything that even slightly supports their claim, condemning or outright dismissing counter-arguments and jumping on rather shaky, questionable-at-best examples of evidence. If WikiLeaks taught us anything, it’s that if there is evidence of unfair practices then the truth will out. So why then is there not more evidence being presented each day, or is the focus simply not on that evidence but rather focusing too much on proving that it’s not actually about the harassment of women?
Meanwhile, the anti-#GamerGate side isn’t even willing to have a conversation, steadfast in the assertion that if you even so much as humour the #GamerGate side then you are implicitly condoning sexism, harassment and discrimination. But what about all the women, LGBT members, and people of colour who are also on the side of #GamerGate? Do they all have internalised sexism as is claimed, or is there actually more to the story?
If you’re a man on the anti-#GamerGate side, you are immediately accused of being a “white knight” who just wants to have sex with the women he is defending. If you’re a woman on the pro-#GamerGate side, you are immediately accused of being an “attention seeker” who just wants men to like her and accept her. Words such as “GG salt” and “man tears” are thrown around, whilst doxxing, threatening, bullying and harassment occurs on both sides, and when caught out they simply say, “Well the other side started it.”
My question to you all is, if a small minority are guilty of harassment and making death and rape threats, and that is enough to condemn the entire #GamerGate argument, why is it then okay, if not acceptable and at times warranted, for anti-#GamerGate members to do the same? I present to you a tweet in which the harassment of a ten-year-old kid was considered getting off easy, as compared to the harassment of an adult woman.
I have this to ask: Seriously?
What has all of this fighting achieved?
You would be forgiven for believing that it was nothing but actually, you would be incorrect.
Exhibit A
Many like to exclaim that the headless movement that is #GamerGate has achieved no clear statement of their intentions, but this is, as it so happens, factually incorrect.
On the one side, #GamerGate has forced ethical policies to be enacted by various websites.
On the other side, #GamerGate has brought about active discussion regarding the treatment of women in the industry, including getting the likes of Anita Sarkeesian on The Colbert Report, and springboarding her to near-household-level fame amongst the techheads and geeks of the world.
Nonetheless, through the power of the media, those not in the know tend to shy away from #GamerGate and declare it a hate movement by default, where it has got to the point that people preface sentiments with, “I’m no GG supporter, but…” That, dear readers, is the take-away for many gaming outsiders.
Closing thoughts
It’s clear that people on either side of #GamerGate are fighting different battles. Anti-#GamerGate are fighting against harassment and abuse of women in gaming. Pro-#GamerGate are fighting against unethical journalism and corruption in gaming.
The topic of sexism in gaming is a contrasting one, with many women in gaming standing up and proclaiming themselves to be victims of abuse, whilst other women also in the gaming are calling “cop out” and declaring that actually, women in gaming are surviving and thriving, albeit not with anything remotely resembling the numbers of males.
I don’t think that feminism is an enemy of gaming, and fighting feminism should not be the point. We’ve seen that some feminists are willing to work together with others in the gaming industry to produce a better quality of gaming experience. Why on Earth would we want to stop that from happening? The argument that feminism is ruining gaming by making developers hesitant to be criticised, is offset by the argument that representation of women must happen or developers will be criticised anyway. And whereas the likes of Anita Sarkeesian would seek to critique without looking for discussion, disregarding pro-#GamerGate examples of representation of women in gaming, she is not the only voice of feminism… just the most antagonised and therefore celebrated right now. But there are others, and they do a much better job of understanding that no, it is not a ‘stubborn resistance to change’ that is the reason gamers are upset, but rather that examples of “misrepresentation” are taken out of context, or disrespecting of other female perspectives that simply don’t see a problem — and not because of internalised sexism.
Unfortunately, as has been stated earlier, there is no change without revolution. And revolution can be chaotic, destructive, not without some casualties along the way (I don’t mean casual gamers). Therefore all of this fighting, if ugly, is necessary, because from the ashes of the fallout of this political warfare will rise a different gaming industry for everyone. One that will undoubtedly be unrecognisable to those of us who grew up in the old one. But one that, hopefully, will be better. Changed. Sadly right now, it’s all the wrong people who are spearheading the cause for each side. You need people who are willing to be diplomatic, and have a proper discussion. I can at least see hints of that on the #GamerGate side but even they tend to flounder and trip on their frustrations, as has been demonstrated by Total Biscuit’s scathing attacks on Leigh Alexander recently.
The focus needs to shift away from harassment and whether or not it exists, and move towards highlighting and then abolishing corruption. The focus must shift to accountability, taking every single article, one at a time, for every single website, and looking at the facts as they are presented, then determining whether it is ethical or not. If the fight remains around harassment and whether or not it exists, then I’m afraid the entirety of the #GamerGate saga will have been an exercise in futility.
So what is my opinion of #GamerGate?
This might surprise you, but I actually consider myself to be a fence-sitter in the whole argument. I am for equality and against discrimination, which is why I cannot abide the disregarding of women, LGBT communities and people of colour who fall under the #NotYourShield banner, nor can I disregard that #GamerGate has in fact spawned from a disgusting attack on a developer of a free to play game, and the subsequent attacks on other women in the games industry.
Further, I don’t think that #GamerGate is the biggest issue in gaming, let alone the world right now. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that ethical practices are a massive topic of conversation, one that in the past I have lost some friends over, because after all gaming is a multi-billion-dollar franchise, and a very expensive pastime, and I’m honestly tired of people who have money to burn telling me that I must just shut up and play games and be happy, as if they fall into my fucking lap on command. If you can convince your ten thousand readers, unethically, to buy a $60 game, you’ve just made a developer $600,000 worth of money. Extreme example sure, but I have my own first-hand experiences of occasions where a particular website garnered favour with a distributor, developer or publisher, or vice versa, so I am not unaware of what goes on. How would you feel if we started punting the Nintendo New3DS as a viable gaming platform purely because we were offered a review platform if we did so, but never declared that to anyone? These things happen, and in an industry with so much money at stake, integrity and accountability are important.
But as much as I can get behind what #GamerGate is trying to accomplish, I still feel that there are bigger issues. In gaming alone, as much as women are under-represented, throughout my research what I found startling was that the overwhelming majority of either gender, was white. Where are the gamers of other races? Why is representation in this manner not also a discussion? The idea that gaming is a thing that needs to grow up is categorically untrue, because the likes of Bethesda and BioWare have been doing LGBT and race representation since the nineties. Gamers though? Less so. I can count on one hand, the number of black gamers I know. But as for women, I know many on both sides of this whole #GamerGate saga. So why is racial representation not also a large factor? Is it a case of one issue at a time? Or is it, as was previously stated, simply a political issue where the privileged fight each other while the rest of us are left to suffer the consequences of the rift created by the fight?
I have lost respect for so many people in this industry, and I find myself constantly upset by watching what’s going on. The worst, for me, is seeing those who claim to be above all of it and determining the rest of us to be silly and childish. But how wrong are they, really? In a world with global warming, an ongoing energy crisis, anti-vaccination, anti-GMOs, gluten allergies (seriously?), religious conflict, and failing democracies, how big of an issue is ethics in games journalism, really?
Here’s the kicker though: How many people outside of the gaming industry actually care about #GamerGate enough to educate themselves about it? Further, how many people within gaming development are actually bothered by it, or interested in joining the fight? I hear a lot of people go “I don’t care about all the drama, I only care about the games,” and how can I possibly fault them for that? Even if #GamerGate potentially ends up affecting their gaming in some way in the long run, how can I say they are wrong to hold this mindset?
To conclude then, I stand neither with nor against #GamerGate. I stand with equality. I stand with integrity. I stand with logic. And I stand with discussion. And when either side is willing to have a discussion, I for one will have both ears ready to listen, and both eyes ready to see. Will you?
Note: For a full serious of the events of #GamerGate, please check out the Know Your Meme website, which presents what I’ve found to be the least biased perspective available.
The post Life, The Universe And Gaming: On #GamerGate, Feminism, Ethics, Harassment, And Working Together appeared first on #egmr.