This was originally posted on Aug. 26 2014 as the lone entry on nastythingssaidabout.wordpress.com , which has since been deleted. I don’t know who wrote it, or where it went, I was sad to see it go and so I’m reposting it here.
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Something is bothering me about this industry. It may not be quite what you expect going into this blog post, so please bear with me and if you disagree, especially if you disagree, please consider working through to the end. It will all become clear.
It’s long, I apologise, but I and those who feel the same way as me have a lot of feelings on this subject that need voicing, and I don’t want to cut important points out or trim out the very relevant emotion I feel is core to this for the sake of making it more digestible, so please read as much as you’re willing, and if anyone wants to quote or digest it elsewhere you are free to do so as long as you would be kind enough to link to the main text.
First of all I’m going to quote a few horrible misogynistic comments that have been posted around the internet about some poor woman who was guilty of nothing more than being a woman on the internet.
“Anita Sarkeesian is a cunt”
“This girl needs to take a vacation with a cinder block to the bottom of the Pacific, so that maybe everyone will finally stop bitching about her.”
“Nice. Anita Sarkeesian is getting on everyones nerves and fucking pissing everyone off. Sum1 should go to her relatives homes, fuck her mom, rape her dad then ram a red hot iron bar into her pussy. She seriously needs to do everyone a favor for once and die. That mother fucking anti gamer shit. Oh well we cant blame her for doing this line of work. Hey not everyone has normal brains.”
“Wow does this girl have to complain about everything, like comon there just video games. and exactly she is just a publicity whore.”
“Does anyone know Anita Sarkeesian’s address? i wanna kill her.”
“I hope Anita Sarkeesian slips in a puddle of aids and falls on a jagged piece of rusty metal and it penetrates her spincter, thus giving her aids and tetnus, and she will get lockjaw from tetnus which would shut that cunt up untill she succombs to the aids.”
“I just sent Anita Sarkeesian yet another email. I wonder when she’ll respond to all those hatemail I sent her…”
“The girl is a fucktarded fucking cunt”
“I hope she fucking dies.”
“I’ve got another Musket fully loaded and hanging on my wall with her name on it.”
“OMG! Anita Sarkeesian is a cunt and should be shot and killed dead and I hate Anita Sarkeesian and she doesnt know fuck all about games and gamers and she is a cunt”
“I can’t wait until Anita Sarkeesian dies. At least earthworms will benefit from her existence then.”
“I hope she goes to africa and gets buttf*cked by a gorilla and dies of aids.”
“I also agree that she should be butt fucked :)”
All these horrible comments, just because she’s a woman. Just because she’s a woman she has to put up with this torrent of abuse, threats of rape, death threats, and people wishing terminal diseases upon her. It’s no wonder she turned off comments on her video series.
Just because she’s a woman, a woman, just because she’s a woman, a woman, no man would ever get this kind of abuse, no man would ever get this abuse, ever get this abuse, get this abuse, except of course….
All the above quotes were actually directed at Jack Thompson,infamous game industry opponent and self professed ‘male’. So why in the hell was he recieving RAPE THREATS? Surely this is a women’s issue? Surely only women get this kind of abuse?
NO THEY DON’T
http://www.videogamessuck.com/ftopic86.html
http://gamepolitics.com/2007/03/16/breaking-take-two-sues-jack-thompson#.U_yBHPmwJws
http://www.eurogamer.net/forum/thread/100560
http://www.xboxachievements.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-39695.html
These took about 2 minutes to rustle up.
All these quotes, with ‘him’s transposed to ‘hers’, and one ‘dick’ turned into a ‘pussy’, judged by the SJW authority that dominates twitter, tumblr, and the majority of the gaming press these days, would pass as vile misogyny. Hating women and sending them torrents of abuse ‘just for being a woman’, with assertions that ‘no man would ever get this kind of abuse’. This is simply not true, as I’ve demonstrated above.
And have we already forgotten this?
http://kotaku.com/death-threats-follow-small-call-of-duty-tweak-888324886
or are we just averting our eyes and blocking our ears as it doesn’tquite fit the narrative we’re trying to create? Can you honestly say the quotes found in this blog collection taken from his twitter feed that make no reference to a female would not be labelled misogynist if they were gender switched? or are not comparable in content and tone, to the type of abuse Anita gets? Or that this man had no legitimate threats against himself or his family? Or at the very least threats that feel legitimate?
Or how about this?
I’m pretty sure everyone will remember this?
http://www.develop-online.net/news/flappy-bird-creator-receives-death-threats/0189038
Or have we snipped that weeks long drama onto the editing room floor, wiping it from existence to better fit this narrative? Or could it be true that men also get a great deal of abuse, threats and intimidation, insults and hate mail, if they happen to stir up the internet trolls for whatever reason? And further they may suffer emotional distress over such abuse?
I’m not defending any of the comments made, as there is no excuse and many are so appalling to read that it turns my stomach. I have unending sympathy for anyone on the receiving end of it, and no one deserves it. But it makes me so so angry to see this painted as a cross that women alone have to bear, or that it is somehow inherently worse targeted at a woman, all in the same breath as promoting gender equality and we are told ‘damsel in distress’ tropes in games are a damaging thing. But most of all it makes me angry that the existence of this abuse side-swipes any possible critical discussion.
This is a problem for anyone who has any prominence on the internet. I’m sure if you were to gender swap some of the shit flung at Notch or Total Biscuit on a daily basis it would come across as misogyny. Even the Emperor of ‘privileged old white dudes’, Richard Dawkins, probably, certainly, has an inbox that could curdle milk. At what point is any of this exclusively an issue for females on the internet?
The problem is this is a horrendous double standard, as it’s suddenly reported and discussed as being a thousand times more terrible, insidious if it happens to be a woman being attacked by males, and as such it pretty much immunises any prominent female, Anita Sarkeesian being a prime example, of any critical discourse– since anyone who objects to her point of view and finds her dishonest, or even just hates on her in the classic reactionary way the internet does, is dressed up in women hating misogyny and any of the underlying reasons for disagreeing are flushed away. Shout MISOGYNY MISOGYNY MISOGYNY MISOGYNY MISOGYNY enough and the real criticisms get lost in the noise, and suddenly itsyet another story about how all men hate women.
Sure, you say you hope someone dies of aids, that makes you an asshole. Some people are assholes. That will NEVER change, and assholes will always pick a stick to beat you with that is most effective and most offensive to you. If you’re a woman, that is what the stick will be. If you were gay, that’s what the stick would be. If you had big ears… And so on. Don’t confuse the choice of stick with the reason for wanting to beat you with it in the first place.
Assholes will mock someone’s disability. They will mock someone’s race. Mock someone’s appearance. Mock someone’s voice. Mock and insult anything that it is apparent to them will hurt those they are attacking’s feelings. Assholes will threaten you with violence, they will threaten you with death. They will threaten you of rape, in the ass if you’re a man and, well, it may vary with a woman. They will wish cancer upon you, or that you die in a fire. They are assholes, and are not representative of ANY group except a group of assholes. Stop drawing a circle around the assholes targeting you with sexist insults or threats and attributing what they say to our entire fucking gender, painting us as rape supporting monsters, please? Can’t you see how that’s a horribly generalised and sexist thing to do? Double standards again. The amount of times I’ve read SJW pieces using ‘men’ as a collective term for a bunch of offensive opinions of the ‘asshole’ group makes me want to weep. ‘Men’ think this, ‘men’ view women as… and so on. If I said ‘women are manipulative liars’ because I’d had the misfortune to be hurt by several female manipulative liars I would rightly be called out as making a sexist generalization. Why is the same not true in reverse? Because the SJW’s dominate the online dialogue, and anyone who feels otherwise is by definition a sexist.
And let’s forget tarring the name of men based on the actions of a few, do gamers not deserve to be treated with respect and not be generalized as monstrous and abusive cretins threatening to murder and rape women on the internet?
Let’s look at the numbers. According to this, in 2013 “700 Million People Worldwide Play Online Games”
This is of course discounting anyone who doesn’t play online games, so will likely be vastly smaller than the real figure. Of these, 54% are men. We’ll take for granted the insult of grouping in the other 46%.
That’s 378,000,000 male gamers in the world. Actually likely much higher, but we’ll go with this figure.
So there are 378,000,000 people you are lumping together into a single group and making sweeping generalizations about how they don’t respect women, or attack women for no reason on the internet.
So here is the important question. How many people would it take to create the amount of abusive noise that Anita gets after posting her videos?
Would it take 378 million people? Of course not. In fact, if 378 million people were abusing her I doubt twitter would stay standing for more than a second.
Would it take 37 million? Again, the same result.
3.7 million? Not even close. We’re now at 0.9% of the gamer population now, by the way.
370,000? Do you really believe that there are 370,000 people sending abuse to Anita whenever she posts videos? Really? No, this is still way too high at 0.09% of the gamer population. This is more people than most of her recent videos have had views. Are you seriously telling me this many people are actively trolling her and sending misogynistic insults and rape threats?
37,000? Same question. Be honest. Can you remotely imagine what 37,000 people all tweeting abuse would look like? 0.009% of the gamer population.
3,700? Okay I can buy that. It seems a lot, but perhaps if they are posting in shifts? It’s the first number we’ve reached that seems somewhat reasonable. So let’s say this is the number. We’re now at 0.0009% of the gamer population. Yet the gaming press and SJWs is so quick to state that ‘gamers’ are being horrible to Anita Sarkeesian.
But can we go further? How far down do we need to go before the amount of noise and abuse couldn’t be attributed to that number of people?
Think about it.
Imagine sitting in a large open plan office with 100 people in it.
If each and every single one of them were to down tools, start creating spoof email addresses and twitter accounts, and started throwing insults and threats at Anita in a determined effort, without any coordination. To find threads about her, websites about her, and post as much abuse and hate as possible. Blast twitter threat after twitter threat, creating alias after alias, for an entire day, are you telling me they couldn’t make sufficient noise and abuse on Anita’s twitter feed to account for all the abuse that has been sent to her twitter feed? If we were to twitter search and count them all up, are you genuinely telling me this would not be possible? Effectively a large development company who’s ‘product’ was Anita Sarkeesian abuse. Even being generous for how much time a determined troll may donate to sending abuse, it’s clear you don’t necessarily need that many people to create this kind of noise and abuse.
I propose it certainly would be plausible, even if I’m prepared to accept it’s probably more. So now in my mind, we could potentially explain the abuse that Anita has to some 100 or so determined trolls gleefully spending their days abusing her as much as possible.
100 people? That’s this percentage of gamers, according to my calculator: 2.7027027027027027027027027027027e-5
Yes, the number has so many decimal places, that it cannot be expressed legibly in Calculator.
Could we go EVEN LOWER? How low could we go? How many layoffs from the 100 strong team would it take before they would be incapable of creating that noise and abuse?
Can we maybe consider someday actually counting the number of abusive messages we can find, and do actual calculations and seehow many people this truly likely represents? Does anyone even know? Even an estimation? Has anyone actually bothered to check?
I suddenly have an amusing image in my head of one lone asshole pitting everyone else on the entire internet against each other with a big grin on his face. Of course not, but really… how many are we actually talking here? Perhaps we should figure this out before we start judging what ‘men’ or ‘gamers’ or any other demographic or grouping are ‘like’?
I’m not a mathematician, but you don’t need to be to understand that plausibly 100 or so people is an almost non existent sample of gamers, and orders of magnitude smaller sample of males generally. How DARE you propose that these people, this potential ROOM full of people, represent the views of ANY of us. Gamers or men alike. Even if its closer to the 3,700 figure (however I still suspect it will be between the two) it still equates to an amount of people that is statistically irrelevant to the issue. No matter how the abuse may make you feel, how horrible it is to experience, or how wrong and appalling your treatment may be, you’re being abused by a bunch of people, not by a ‘men’, and not by ‘gamers’ any more than ‘gamers’ live in Barbados, or ‘gamers’ have a lisp, or ‘gamers’ have an extremely rare genetic blood disease, or ‘gamers’ were at a specific party. The number of people are so insignificant in relation to all gamers, and yet you will systematically destroy gamer’s reputation to the outside world. This is a disgrace. And any games blogger (not journalist) who have thrown these kind of generalizations out there should be ashamed.
Go search for @femfreq on twitter right now. Go through every tweet sent to her. Admittedly it’s the day after, and you can expect things have settled down. But it doesn’t paint the picture of thousands of determined trolls at all. I need to drill back further, but it’s slow going. There’s so much praise and adoration to wade through I only made it back a couple of hours. Now I admit a lot of the support is in response to her tweets about leaving the house after some threatening tweets. But she’d already been tweeted about by the creator of Firefly, I can’t possibly judge the density or number of supportive vs abusive.
Since posting this I’ve been called out for making a generalization myself, lumping SJWs together in a ‘group’. I felt the need to address this here since many don’t read the comments.
When I say ‘SJW’ I’m not making a generalization about many many forms of Social Justice Warriors.
They are a very specific type of person that by definition are responsible for the problems I talk about, the same way as trolls who send rape and murder threats are justifiable as being grouped together as ‘trolls’ for the purposes of the discussion. There are different degrees of fundamentalism of SJWs, and Anita isn’t at the top of that scale for sure, but she registers on it pretty high. There are many feminists who strongly disagree with the SJW rhetoric too. It would be a generalization to say ‘feminist’, but when I say the initials SJW people know exactly what I’m talking about and a very very specific type of mindset. It’s out of respect for actual feminists, ones that have been involved in actual women’s rights issues, of which there are staggering atrocities still going on all over the world to this day, that I make clear its specifically SJWs I have an issue with. Isn’t the term SJW a term invented by their critics anyway? I think we all know the personalities that are implied by the term so please don’t try and deflect my arguments on such weak pretences. And whether Anita herself in particular subscribes to any view I mention in this post or not, they are commonly heard SJW rhetoric and still valid in my arguments against SJW being a remotely positive force.
So yesterday, Anita announced she’d been run out of her house due to horrible threats against her after the latest episode of her videos. My sympathies to her for receiving threatening tweets. I mean that sincerely, obviously despite my absolute opposition to her stance on video games. I’m tempted to let her tweet slide this time and put it down to her emotional state, but I really feel the need to just reiterate that again since the publishing of this blog just yesterday, we hear that from Anita herself, and I quote:
‘this harassment of women in tech must stop!’
What about harassment of Call of Duty developers? Or the harassment of Vietnamese iPhone developers? Or harassment of atheists? Or the harassment of gaming YouTubers? Or even the harassment of anti-game violence lawyers in Florida? Please stop painting this as a problem exclusive to women. Can’t we just ask that harassment of people should stop? Do none of the others matter?
But then again maybe Jack Thompson never really got any actual real-life threats that were serious enough for the authorities to take notice, and if he did I’m sure a similar controversy would break out in defence of Jack the poor victim, twitter would be aflame for weeks with people denouncing it and stating it as a severe prejudice in the industry that needs addressing?
Or maybe the EXACT same shit happened to Jack Thompson…?
As the second commenter states ‘…He deserves it.’ – apparently the majority agreed since few remember Jack Thompson as a victimized innocent and the press were rarely on his side. Even SJW overlord John Walker glibbly remarking about “what would happen without [Jack] to protect us? Rockstar would roam free, stalking the streets at night to show our over-17s images of cartoons having sex. That’s what.” – In a post dripping with sarcasm and trivializing Thompson’s quest, as well as defending or at least accepting Rockstar’s freedom to put sexual content into their games, with a glib ‘children protecting’ tone that suggests he inherently finds such content benign and harmless and not worthy of attention providing you’re over 17. Would this honestly be the same rhetoric spouted if it were Anita taking pot shots at Rockstar? Or if Anita found herself in legal troubles due to her campaign against games? No there would not. In fact there would be a fucking paypal set up within the first ten minutes after the news broke to help her pay her legal costs.You know it’s true. You know it’s true. Yet she’s the one being discriminated against due to her gender in this situation? Hypocrites to the core.
What would be the reaction to any commenter who would suggestAnita deserves her treatment as a large chunk in that Gamespot thread did about Jack? The exact same treatment for the exact same reason of being a campaigner and opponent of games and gamers on moralistic grounds. Misogynist. Yup. Cut and dry, indisputable sexist monster. READ those comments, the contempt, the approval of his treatment, and do the ‘him/her’ switcharound on them. WHERE IS THE DISTINCTION? POINT ME AT IT.
“But Anita is right, Jack was wrong!” I hear you argue. Well you’re welcome to your opinion. But we disagree and we should be able to voice the same dissent without it being twisted into an attack on her gender all the time.
Considering the rhetoric of Anita is almost a direct parallel of Jack Thompson’s, substituting violence with sexism, with the same unfounded claims of real world connection between actions in video games and real life behavior, cherry picking out of context scenes to misrepresent the games she is critiquing (PLEASE watch the linked video in entirety if you any way hold the view that Anita is honestly representing the games she’s critiquing), albeit with a suspect stance that she’s like us and ‘loves’ video games despite video evidence to the contrary.
So she gets abuse, and disables her comments. I’m sure the abuse was a horrible experience for her, and I don’t doubt that like Jack Thompson, rape and death threats were a regular fixture. I’d never condone this, I think its abhorrent.
Am I saying that Anita makes no valid points, or highlights no legitimate causes for concern? Not at all, there are a few games that go too far, and there are many ways we could improve things. But despite these valid targets dotted sporadically around, a lot of her criticisms betray a lack of understanding of the language of video games, the technicalities of game development clear to anyone with an intimate knowledge of gaming, or the constraints of development teams, or of course thousands of years of cultural inertia that betray deeper issues in society at large that its overly simplistic or downright unfair to criticise games for. And as linked above, other times she is flat-out dishonest and manipulative and that I’m afraid brings her entire argument to its knees. People who are right do not need to use tactics like this to make an argument, and I find it somewhat surprising and a little sad when heroes such as Tim Schafer, who I could only assume have much more understanding of game development than I do, seemingly not recognise any of these issues with her arguments and recommend and legitimise her videos without even a ‘but’.
I’ve asked numerous people from within the industry their opinions on Anita’s views and they almost universally have serious issues with her arguments or how she presents them, and each one of them has stated that they would never dare even broach the subject on twitter. These are not exclusively male people I’m talking about here, either. This is the culture of intimidation surrounding high profile SJWs within the industry. Often only the trolls, and myself in this case, I guess, dare strike albeit anonymously, and that has resulted in an unrepresentative bias toward the perceived unconditional support from within the industry itself. To those that criticise her or any other SJW under their own name and without resorting to attacks, and brave the prospect (more often than not the certainty) of being labelled a misogynist then kudos. I have so much respect for you. Many many many of us are not so brave.
So, with all that in mind, how about we leave gender aside for a minute and consider that people are maybe getting angry for legitimate reasons?
Why wasn’t Jack Thompson’s abuse treated with the same level of scorn and disapproval as Anita’s was? I’m sure his age was a frequent stick used to beat him, so why wasn’t it deemed ‘ageist’? That just because Jack Thompson was pretty old and has white hair, he’s getting all this horrible vile hate. JUST FOR BEING OLD. No young person would ever get this kind of abuse. I’m so lucky I was born young, it’s terrible to see how old people get unending abuse for no reason except being old… Poor Jack!
Or KSI? That poor guy, getting all that hate just because he’s black! Of course not, it’s nonsense to suggest. He was getting all that hate for legitimate humiliating abuse of women, on camera no less, at a games conference. I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at anything a feminist may choose to throw at him. Call him a misogynist and a damaging influence on the minds of impressionable youths, and I’ll be right behind you.
People didn’t hate on KSI because he is black. People don’t hate Jack Thompson because he’s old. People don’t hate Phil Fish because he wears glasses, or Donald Trump because he wears a wig, even if these things happen to be used in attacks on them. People hate these people because they are assholes, or have done assholish things that they may legitimately disagree with. People get this when the subject happens to be a guy, especially if those leading the charge are the SJWs! All criticisms are about the person’s views and the views alone and if you want to take a pop at that asshole’s toupee while you’re at it then it’s fair game. Behold the double standard, since this exactly mirrors the views of those claiming misogyny is rampant in this industry. It’s all about the gender and not about the views expressed. If someone drops an ‘n’ bomb at KSI does that make the legitimate arguments against him disappear, and suddenly he’s a victim beyond reproach?
It only seems to be the SJWs that hijack any kind of criticism floored at them and claim it a prejudice against their gender, and that the onlyreason for that criticism is because they are a woman and those criticising ‘hate women’, and any argument is just a front to fake legitimacy for their irrational and intense hatred of woman kind. Why is this?
Because the SJWs reign supreme, not through any tendrils in the gaming press like the whole Quinnspiracy controversy claims, but in my opinion and from my experiences, that anyone who has any prominence, writes words for a website, or has a game to sell is either:
1) Giving way undue benefit of the doubt when absorbed in the ‘men are scum’ rhetoric day in day out, assuming ‘no smoke without fire’ and buying into it, having no reason to doubt the claims of victimhood from certain people, compartmentalizing occurrences of abuse against men and never actually considering or investigating if women genuinely get it worse, or for no reason at all (not necessarily implying it has to be a good reason). Or…
2) Otherwise see it for what it is but are too terrified of being tarred with the misogyny brush, being called a rape supporter, or whatever else, just for finding Anita or Zoe Quinn, or any other SJW’s views misleading, incorrect, harmful, or at least worthy of critical debate.
Either you’re with us, or you’re against us. There’s no room for discussion. White knight, or rape supporter. Those are your choices, it seems. No one wants to be a sexist, and to be dubbed a rape supporter is to be ostracised by the games industry as a whole.
So everyone steps in line, and accepts that trigger warnings and obsessive meticulous and determined consideration of gender pronouns (even if talking about yourself) are just ‘what you do now’ and if you don’t, or in any way question whether people have the right to be shielded from any possible kind of offence in a public forum, or that everyone from every background, nationality or perspective should abide by some supreme, hazy and ever expanding doctrine to make sure no one ever feels they have no representation or are unintentionally and non-maliciously insulted in a statement you make, then god help you if the SJW spotlight comes in your direction. For the record, I’m all for people being encouraged to use more inclusive language, but all too often it comes across more like bullying people into it with the threat of outrage rather than encouraging them.
Not unlike Islam, SJWs are immune to criticism because people fear criticising them because of the damage that could be inflicted if they do. All criticism goes silent and is dressed up as some kind of prejudice. You’re a racist in Islam’s case, a sexist in SJWs case. It’s the ultimate straw-man argument. A straw-man of prejudice. And it bites back at anyone who even points out it’s there.
The SJW brigade could quite literally end someone’s career, and have them ostracised in the eyes of the games press or other developers for failing to live up to the new world order of never saying anything ever to a woman that could even be misinterpreted as a flirtation, never making a risqué or edgy joke, never quoting Jesse Pinkman just in case, never mentioning any kind of sexual activity even in passing.
What I’ve found is I had to sterilise my personality, avoiding many a joke in case it’s taken the wrong way, over-analysing everything I write and imagining nightmare scenarios where I inadvertently say the wrong thing or miss a memo on ‘the new thing we do to be tolerant’ and get dragged over the coals. It’s exhausting and stressful and is ruining the internet for me completely . I’ve even found on I’ve, just sometimes, avoided talking to women on twitter at all, purely because of anxieties of this looming SJW shadow. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, and if so how bad is this? This doesn’t seem a good thing for men or women to me.
Will I stop being this obsessive? No, of course not, the fallout could do would be too great if the wrong SJW got a bad vibe from me or some seemingly innocent thing I said. So I just fall in line like the rest, don’t talk about this, don’t dare criticise that, self censoring to the point that it’s no longer me talking, despite never being someone who has held any remotely negative views on women, or even the kind of man who is overtly sexual or would ever dream of being sexually inappropriate or needlessly insulting to a woman online or in real life. Despite this I still find myself enveloped in all the anxieties from it that end up invading every aspect of my online life. One might dare to consider ironically that this authoritarian SJW sword of judgement over our online necks 24-7, ready to gleefully kill our careers if we misstep as inherently oppressive in nature, no? No? Before you tell me to ‘check my privilege’ make sure to read that definition again, and consider the next example.
Being a man or having any stereotypical male traits, displaying any overt sign of sexuality or interest in the opposite sex in earshot of the wrong woman (say perhaps making a childish blowjob joke? Are we really now labelling someone who makes a childish and admittedly stupid, ill-advised and infantile comment about blowjobs as a ‘woman hater?’) is now such a reprehensible thing that you could be painted in the most monstrous light, as a manipulative woman hating sub-human, with very real reputation or career damaging consequences, and somehow its still said that women are the only ones that can possibly be oppressed in this industry.
I’ve been in interviews, audio interviews and transcribed interviews where you’ve got to TALK without the benefit of picking every word meticulously and carefully like we all need to these days, and these interviews are nerve racking for this very reason. The potential for making a really idiotic misstep and saying something you’d later regret is ever on your mind, an ill-advised joke to break the tension, or whatever, and once the interview is over you can barely even remember what you said during it. Running over it in your mind thinking ‘I hope I didn’t say anything stupid.’. Something stupid said in an interview, as benign as a joke about consensual adults, life partners, making a betting / challenge game out of pleasuring each other. Apart from the inappropriateness of stating it, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT? If she loses perhaps he goes down on her? What is the fucking harm in this concept, inappropriateness of the topic aside?????
This was a gaffe. A gaffe. An ill-advised and instantly regretted comment that should do nothing but cause the man who uttered it to be embarrassed, the interviewer be a little uncomfortable, and perhaps the man get poked fun at for the next few days around the net for making such a silly comment. This isn’t some monstrous evil woman hating attack on woman-kind. Get a fucking grip on reality and divert your attention where it actually matters. It’s getting ridiculous.
You can’t drag someone’s name and reputation into the dirt and label them with one of the worst most terrible labels a man can have, based on something like this. It’s a really terrible thing to do, and this gleeful, determined and remorseless character assassination is way way more hateful and harmful than the comment was in the first place, as uncomfortable as the interviewer may have been. Unless of course she happened to get one of these ‘nam style PTSD flashbacks from a man saying the word ‘blowjob’, as this seems to be on the rise.
And while we’re at it, if a straight man references a relationship, or a sexual act, then it is only natural that they would instinctively view it from their own perspective as a straight man. It’s not discriminatory to automatically jump to a scenario that fits within your own personal experiences of life. It’s not wilfully excluding people. A straight man has likely never had a blow job off a man, nor had his vagina licked, so without careful (say written) consideration, in the spur of the moment, its perfectly expected that their frame of reference would be a heterosexual relationship with a woman if they are a heterosexual man.
And tell a feminist that she should conceal or subdue her sexuality, or that how she dresses or acts is inappropriate, I’ve seen so many times THIS claimed to be a misogynistic point of view. A man however, makes some comment presenting his sexuality (without any reference to the female interviewer as being involved whatsoever) and this is also apparently misogyny? Where is the line in the sand exactly? What are the rules? Please explain them to me with absolutely no contradictions or double standards? It seems the SJW goal is not for true equality, but for women to be proud of their sexuality, and heterosexual males to be ashamed of theirs. A stunted, deformed, shameful and malevolent force hidden within us, riddled with perversion and hatred, that if even tangentially exposed in the presence of a woman whom you’re not already in a steady relationship, even if anecdotal and not in any way related to said women, can cause her considerable grief and trauma and proves the man a terrible woman hating monster worthy of their reputation or livelihood destroyed and as much scorn and hate as can be mustered.
So blurting out an awkward and inappropriate joke in an interview now means you’re a misogynist. That’s the new status quo. This is a very real recognizable authority with power over our reputations, watching what we say, judging us on their own criteria, with the press pretty much universally and uncritically on-side, laying down harsh authoritarian punishment that can potentially ruin our lives if we don’t stack up, where the criteria for passing is entirely in their hands, with absolutely no oversight, and without any vocal recognised opposition representing those that are judged by this system, that doesn’t automatically have this punishment inflicted on them too if they put up any sign of discontent or argument or stand up for anyone accused. Go read that definition on oppression again. Men aren’t oppressed by women, it would be laughable to suggest as much. But SJWs ARE oppressing men. Any man who has any public prominence, a reputation or a job to lose are under their completejurisdiction in any public communication they make.
And people wonder why this Zoe Quinn thing didn’t get talked about by the mainstream press and there was nothing but support from anyone of any public note whatsoever?
THAT is the Quinnspiracy, but she is but a cog in a much more insidious machine.
Okay, okay. I’ll admit that the majority of this wholly Quinnspiracy affair reeks of tabloid sensationalism gossip and tittle tattle, and I don’t doubt that may also be a factor in the side stepping. There is however a legitimate point to be made buried in there, and it’s not just Quinn’s press connections, or even uncomfortable truths about journalists and developers relationships that would stop any journalist in the entire mainstream gaming media approaching their editor to propose writing a piece on it. That’s all I’m saying.
However now the tabloidy revelations exposed about Quinn are of public knowledge, they are hard to ignore even if you disagree that they should have been made public in the first place (which I categorically think they should not). People cannot be condemned for forming a moral judgement on her based on what they’ve heard or read. This is half the problem, and why someone’s reputation should not be attacked so readily based on a single comment. As if these claims are to be believed, and it seems hard to argue that they are fabricated. Journalism issues aside they paint Quinn in a very bad light such that if the entire story was gender swapped, would be perceived as gross misogynist behaviour from the SJWs, especially if said perpetrator based their entire online principles on how this kind of behavior was despicable and even classifies it as rape. Remember all a man has to do is mention a blowjob to ‘legitimately’ be attacked as a misogynist in an opinion piece on one of the biggest gaming sites.
But when one of their own indulge in such hypocritical behavior the ‘slut-shaming’ buzzword of course comes into play to wave it all off, and yet again categorize any criticism or outrage at her conduct as misogynistic behaviour. Despite tabloids routinely outing male ‘love-rats’ and encouraging everyone to be disgusted with their behavior. Agree or disagree with the tabloids, but no equivalent term exists to protect these male celebrities cheating on their celebrity partners from any amount of abuse on the net and it’s considered open season when this happens. Hypocrisy and double standards all the way, they permeate every facet of this. Men are held to a set of standards that SJWs have no interest in holding women to, and men are accused of misogyny by holding women to SJW’s standards themselves.
Put aside the press corruption claims and other elements for a moment. So even if male gamers find it an affront that the same kind of SJW personality that lays down moralistic judgement on male sexuality to such a degree, reclassifying the word ‘rape’ to encompass as many men as possible (very common and worrying fundamentalist SJW rhetoric), very strongly appears to have acted so hypocritically, and monstrously to men, regardless of ‘whether it was anyone’s business’ or ‘whether that blog should have been posted’, and then a very small portion of them attacked her for it.?Are you really surprised, at all? Is it ‘misogyny’ at the root of this,really?
Judge not lest ye be judged, unless you’re an SJW. In which case judge as much as you like, and if you’re judged back then they are probably a misogynist. It seems there are so many roads a man can travel down and somehow end up at Misogyniville you start to wonder if anywhere else exists. I say this not as some ”bro’ going around nightclubs picking up chicks to bang’, I say this as a geek in a loving relationship who has never so much as uttered an inappropriate or sexual comment at a women I didn’t know and wouldn’t have the nerve to stare at a woman in the street, let alone cat call or whatever else. Yet I feel like I’m being perpetually painted as a monster by virtue of my gender and sexual orientation, as part of the ‘patriarchy’ out to manipulate and demean women at every turn. This is what the SJW narrative is trying to convince me, and it very nearly managed to brainwash me into accepting this lie before I graduated from category 1 to category 2 listed above. It has a really negative effect on me, and this is not fair since I’ve done nothing wrong (until perhaps this post and related tweets, I have no doubt this will be judged as hideous and misogynistic by every SJW on the internet who happens to see it.)
I’m a heterosexual man who has normal sexual urges like everyone else. I have nothing to be ashamed of, so stop dumping all this SJW pseudo-feminist dogma on my head, and save it for the true monsters out there. Make your distinctions clear, and don’t dump innocent people into your ever expanding misogyny pile.
I digress. That all said I still agree the blowjob comment was wildly inappropriate, I’d just like to perhaps paint a picture that doesn’t involve him being a massive woman hating monster who uses deceit and manipulation to trick women into sucking him off. That’s a fucking gross conclusion to come to from that.
It’s always the remit of right wing horrible tabloid newspapers to spit through clenched teeth the phrase ‘political correctness gone mad’ and I loathe to say it myself, but when it has gotten to the point where the internet has had its sense of humor sucked dry, to the point where many people are falling into line of feminist rhetoric purely as a defence mechanism, more scared of being perceived as being sexist, misogynist, or somehow contrived to be a supporter of rape, perhaps second only to pedophilia in the ranking of ‘worst things a man can be accused of’, you’ve got to ask yourself what has happened and at what point this movement is a ‘step in the right direction’ or how this movement has anything to do with equality.
I’m not saying there aren’t problems with gender equality in the games industry. Of course not. I’m sure there are cases of sexual discrimination to be found, as it is in other industries. Maybe it’s worse to an extent, I cannot say. But I can put my hand on heart and say I’ve never ever witnessed it myself. Not. Once. We look around the male dominated offices, a sea of men, a handful of women, and yearn for a more equal gender balance, yet resume submissions are probably around 99% male, so what are we supposed to do about this, exactly? Tell us, please, and we will do it. It’s true the vast vast majority of game developers are male, so games are always going to be created from a male perspective while this is the case. Male writers may struggle at writing female characters that stand up to the scrutiny of female audiences, particularly those with feminist views. Male designers may instinctively view things from a male perspective, creating missions based around locations or people feminists find problematic. Male artists may subconsciously imbue their female characters with their own sexual ideals, and this may be to the extent that some games may alienate some women. This may well be the case, this point has been made clear by feminist voices within and without the games industry and I’m not about to suggest that your feelings are not sincere.
But in my experience this isn’t the patriarchy, the old boys club leering and jeering at the misogyny they are gleefully pumping into their games. The resumes just aren’t there. The female perspective is not accessible to us to the extent you demand. We can’t just wave a wand and fill those resume piles up with willing and capable female applicants. The solution? You want an actual workable solution how we can sort this problem out within the next decade or so? More young women wanting a career in the games industry!
I’ll also tell you what’s not going to help address this:
Frightening women at the prospect of unending abuse and victimization from gamers, despite the fact that a few cases aside (The horrible Mass Effect affair for example) the vast majority of women working in games do so quietly and happily without any abuse or victimization whatsoever. The extremely vocal personalities going around throwing accusations of sexism at games and into every corner of the internet get a torrent of abuse? Well what a surprise! I’m not saying this is right, and is a problem within itself, but it’s nothing to do with the fact you are a woman. See Jack Thompson for details. See Richard Dawkins for details. See Phil Fish for details. Do I need to go on?
I put to you, that perhaps if you spent more time focusing on thepositives of women in the games industry, and spend your time encouraging more and more female university students to take courses in games programming, instead of putting the fear of constant victimization into their heads, perhaps we’d have a more healthy games industry one day?
Anita. You’re never going to bully the asshole trolls into accepting your views. It will never happen. And as one troll grows out of it, becomes an adult and matures, another starts puberty, feels the rage and fills their place.
And the developers? You’re never going to convince developers to suddenly mystically understand the female perspective when they have never experienced it and have insufficient access to it from job applicants. Male dominated game studios will never live up to your expectations. We can’t stop being men, and thinking with a male perspective, no matter how nicely or nastily you ask us to.
You’re never going to win like this. You’re just going to drag more and more trolls to your feed, malign more and more people to the cause you’re fighting for as they grow wearier and wearier from the almost deafening and constant SJW rhetoric in the media, and disenfranchise and embitter the gaming community through the constant sullying the collective reputation of gamers, based on only a tiny fraction of which actually deserve it, every time you have your life threatened and another Polygon or Kotaku article pops up about how horrendously sexist and evil ‘gamers’ are. Worse over time the perception that treading in the games industry as a woman resulting in certain, constant and traumatic sexual and threatening victimization, and that this is the intrinsic fate of any female developer by virtue purely of their gender will only serve to decrease the amount of girls pursuing careers in games. The lack of representation will get worse, and the games industry will becomemore blind to women’s wants.
And it will keep happening, because they are called ‘trolls’ for a reason. They can be monsters. It will never stop until they get rid of you. They don’t like YOU. Like Jack Thompson, they have a problem with YOU personally, because of what you say, how you say it, and what has become apparent about your gaming history or lack thereof, and don’t let anyone suggest this is about anything else.
And as a developer I feel you’re unfairly attacking and misrepresenting on three independent fronts. As a developer, as a gamer, and as a man. Is that not just cause to dislike you, quite a lot? or is it just because I’m a misogynist?
So Anita, I have a suggestion. Instead of making these often unfairly misrepresentative and biased videos on Tropes vs. Women in Games. If you really want to address these problems. If this isgenuinely your goal and your ideals trump personal desires of wealth or influence, or being some kind of figure head in gaming feminism, and its genuinely and purely just that you want the games you purport to ‘love’ to have better representation for women, then this is what you do…
Take your communications degree and use it to go talk to girls at schools around the country, and encourage them to take up careers in the games industry.
If you get a flood of female students getting interested in and learning the skills necessary for AAA game development, you can have a very real effect on how games portray women, because women will have a louder voice within development studios.
This will ACTUALLY GENUINELY CERTAINLY work, and there won’t be a death threat ever uttered, no trauma, no upset, no controversy, nothing. You’d get to inspire young women and change their lives. This is what is needed, not a bunch of talking head videos on Youtube offering criticism and condemnation and yet offering no real solutions to the real problems of actual lack of representation of women in games development.
Make videos about getting girls interested in 3D art, or game writing. Approach a production company and make some kind of documentary about it perhaps? get in touch with the Indie Game: The Movie people? Make this your crusade. I promise you you’ll get no hate, will find no resistance, and will have support from gamers and developers alike. You’ll still get the coverage in game media too. This is an actual workable plan that I’m certain would yield significant results if pushed hard enough and extra support was enlisted.
This is the antidote to all these problems. All of them. It’s a solution, and you’ve got a pocket full of money from your Kickstarter to pay for the journey. I’m sure your Kickstarter backers may even approve of such a noble pursuit. Do it! If not you, then somebody arrange this please.
Who are these people? Does anyone know? Has anyone ever heard of them? I know who a few of these are, but that’s nothing to do with game industry SJWs.
I’ve read about how horribly abused and victimised women are on adaily basis. It’s the number one talking point within gaming media and social networking, and has been for a long time. I’ve followed a lot of this dialogue, but do I hear SJWs singing from the rooftops of the truly inspirational figures, holding them up as shining examples of empowered women in games?
No, all we hear, day in day out, is how terrible it is to be a woman in the industry. To the point where can’t you at least forgive the troll lurking somewhere for worrying just a little that more women in the games industry means MORE of this SJW rhetoric being rammed down their throats day in, day out? considering from their perspective that is all you hear in relation to women in video games? Is this remotely the best way to deal with the legitimate issues here? Can you not see its this relentless agenda pushing that’s maligning the movement in the first place, and perhaps causing a lot of the stuff that you’re holding up and shouting misogyny about?
Claiming victim-hood and painting the experience of a woman in the games industry as one to be terrified of is not going to help things, and if anything will only make things worse.
So get over to those schools and start preaching about the wonderful creative potential the games industry has to offer these girls! Tell the story of these women and their accomplishments, and inspire a new generation of female developers to expand their ranks! The games women truly want will start rolling out, and female core gamers will also swell in number. This will be nothing but healthy and undoubtedly help in the battle against any sexism in the gaming community too! But don’t count on the trolls going away. They are here to stay, for the rest of time. But that’s okay because we have a chance at a gaming utopia if we actually address the genuine core problems here. This is how positive cultural shifts occur, not through bullying your point of view on people and finger wagging.
So go inspire those young minds! Go on Anita, do it!
Oh wait.
Of course you can’t do that, because like Jack Thompson, you don’t know the first fucking thing about games, game development or the games industry, and have confessed ON VIDEO to not being a fan of games.
Worse you confessed in almost literally the most dismissive, ignorant and stereotypical way possible to describe video games. As any genuine fan of games would know lots of games, particularly many indie games, FAR transcend such a ‘Jack Thompsonesque’ simplification and generalization as being, well… murder simulators?
So people are left to ask what your real motivation is. Like Jack Thompson, you’re an outsider. Like Jack Thompson, you’ve demonstrably lied on various occasions. Like Jack Thompson, are spitting venom at something you do not understand that a lot of people cherish and hold dear, and like Jack Thompson a large chunk of the gaming community, including the trolls, don’t like you and wish you’d go away, and that’s what is at the root of all this, not what reproductive organs you happen to possess.
You know. I remember when I first joined twitter. I just chatted with people, as myself, and everyone seemed to be happy. It did just feel like games. Women I talked to online, joked with, seemed happy to me too. I may have rose tinted glasses, but it sure seems that way. I just have to ask the question: What’s changed over the years? Why is everyone so angry all the time?
Maybe I’m just getting old, who knows?
nastythingssaidabout2 