An Open Letter to Those Who Game.

Hey, hi. I’d ask you how it’s going, but given the last couple of weeks I am going to assume that things could be going better. I have learned more in these past two weeks about the next-level shit that women deal with than I have in years. I don’t know how you manage to keep fighting this fight in the face of such vitriol. I only know that I am so very glad that you do.

I actually wrestled with writing this letter at all, because I think that right now, the best thing that men can do is to just listen to what women have to say. We have had the floor for so long, it is past time that we give someone else a chance to speak. That makes sense, right? Unfortunately, it seems that those who need to listen most are the ones who are raising an ugly, shitty ruckus.

We like to talk a lot about these people being just a vocal minority. We like to say that they are not representative of our hobby, and that the vast majority of us are well-adjusted, inclusive individuals. #NotAllMen, right? Well, that’s horse shit. If this supposed majority doesn’t speak up, then we might as well all be the frothing douchebags who are the root of this problem. We might as well be the ones making threats. Our silence condones this behavior. What kind of support can we offer if we never speak up?

So let’s stop being quiet. Let’s throw our support behind the Cara Ellisons, Leigh Alexanders, and Anita Sarkeesians of the world. Let’s have a discussion about the underrepresentation of minorities and women in games and gaming culture, and let’s do something about it. Let’s add our voice to the chorus asking for change and no longer allow the ignorant and immature to speak for us.

Because this stuff is important. Because everyone deserves to be treated like a person. Because someday, I may have a daughter who I want to share my hobby with, and I want her to be able to enjoy it without fear. Because the women who are speaking out right now are heroes, and they deserve our support.

I guess this ended up being more about what gentlemen such as myself can do to than anything else. In the end, I just want to show my support. I cannot stay quiet any longer. I hope that I am not the only one.

To the women of gaming, who have put up with so much for so long, you all have my profound thanks. Please never stop creating, never stop fighting. You are not alone.

To any other man who has been silent up to this point: it is time to speak up. Write letters, post blogs, do whatever you are in a position to do. Prove that we are as welcoming and inclusive of a community as we like to think we are.

Time to change.

@vincentavatar: Just wanna echo your sentiment.

Englisht being my second language, I often have an hard time explaining why I find some parts of the gaming culture problematic. There is often someone with the same idea that can express it better than I.

The best way I've found to supports the progress I want to see in games is to help when I can through Kickstarter or Patreon. I'm far from rich, but if it can help make the medium I love better, I'll happily pledge a 20$. GX3, even if I can't go there this year, is a good place to start, I think.

I think it is important we see the positive side in all this. As Raimi Ismail (of Vlambeer fame) has said on twitter, harassment is a last resort tactic from people that are afraid to become a minority. While it is often disappointing to see how much hate those get, it is incredible to see that we are beginning to get feminist, aesthetic, social and thematic critics of the medium. We should strive for those to stay, as they give new points of view that open the medium to new avenues.

@fear_the_booboo: Oh, the Twitter harassment and disturbing threats are definitely the last acts of desperate men, but I think it is important to not let that harassment be the only voice in the discussion. I don't want those sorts of people speaking for me any longer; the only way to do that is to speak up myself.

Fuck all of this social media wars bullshit. I like videogames, I don't act like a terrible person. I have no interest in getting caught up in some shit slinging contest for good or evil or jerks or mysogyny or misandry or whatever the fuck, I'm fucking sick of it. Just play a fucking videogame and enjoy what is an amazing fucking medium, christ.

I knew I could count on this community to be a voice of reason. Trying to run a search on this stuff to get an unbiased account of the facts (as I did recently) results in finding A) people talking about the unheard of level of censorship surrounding these events and B) links to sites that have no interest in censorship whatsoever, like one gem in particular I found at Return of Kings (you don't wanna go there).

I did - eventually - find a summary of what I can best ascertain to be a truthful account, but that rabbit hole I jumped down pretty much ruined my week. I can only say I second your opinions on the subject.

@meatball: ok

cool ^_^

We like to say that they are not representative of our hobby, and that the vast majority of us are well-adjusted, inclusive individuals. #NotAllMen, right? Well, that’s horse shit. If this supposed majority doesn’t speak up, then we might as well all be the frothing douchebags who are the root of this problem.

If I don't support the troops, then I'm supporting the terrorists!

I wholeheartedly agree duder. :D

Here, read this. It echos my thoughts on the matter perfectly and it saves me the time of having to type out a long ass post explaining how I feel about all of this. Warning, it is a long read, but the guy makes a lot of great points with very sound logic.

http://nastythingssaidabout.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/the-terrible-misogyny-in-the-games-industry/

I'm not throwing my support behind Anita because she is manipulative and disingenuous. Fuck her. While I agree with the sentiment that women are under represented in games, I don't buy her line of thinking in the least. I don't like how she misrepresents games and gamers. Like the bit she did on GTA. Basically she said that it encouraged violence against women because you could have sex with a prostitute, and then kill her, and the game rewards you for doing it with money. Totally glancing over the fact that female and male citizens can be killed by the player and upon death they drop money. It is an element of the design. The game doesn't ever encourage you to kill prostitutes or present that as a goal.

Don't call me a fucking misogynist either. My problem isn't with women. I would love more women to be involved in the industry, because as it stands now not many women actually get into the field. Not because it is a boys club that tells them to keep out, but because they seem to not have a lot of interest. Similar to how you don't see a lot of men in cosmetology classes. No, my problem is straight up with Anita.

Thanks for putting yourself out there like this, OP. It isn't always easy to get involved and put yourself out there and be subjected to harassment. As someone who lives with depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, I often find myself typing up my feelings on issues like these that bring out the worst in people and then deleting them to avoid the anxiety of wondering if/when some asshole is going to come along and drop a turd on me. Or not confronting people in my own life that say or do things that make myself or others feel bad so that I don't have to deal with the fallout. But in recent weeks, I've been making a concerted effort to lend my voice where I feel it's appropriate, to better myself, my life, and the lives of others who don't deserve the shit that they receive.

I'm glad to see that you're passionate about improving things for everyone, but this kind of sentiment is misplaced masochism that doesn't improve anything and at most make innocent folks aggravated. If a person on the street next to me is being attacked, and I do nothing, I'm to blame. If an anonymous person is digitally doing something terrible somewhere to someone else someplace, I can't stop that. It's simple, I just physically can't intervene. And accusing all of us as being part of the problem because of the reality of that situation only makes things worse. Especially with this kind of context:

Let’s throw our support behind the Cara Ellisons, Leigh Alexanders, and Anita Sarkeesians of the world.

You set up a false dichotomy here where if I don't fully support all women who do game related things, I hate those women and am trying to oppress them. It's precisely this kind of growing sentiment which has made things as heated as they are. I refuse to support Anita when she intentionally manipulates and misrepresents the content of games to try and prove her points. I refuse to support Leigh when her articles condemning hatred are brimming with divisive insults themselves. I will never, ever resort to personal insults at them for doing anything they want to do, but insisting that I might as well be someone calling rape threats to a person's home and saying that I'll murder their family if I disagree with a thing a person makes, is honestly pretty disgusting.

I don't mean to be overly blunt as you clearly mean well, but "speaking up" is an empty gesture. The people harassing others online know that it's wrong. That's why they do it. Internet jerks aren't going to see a bunch of blog posts from people no one knows and think, "Oh no! Maybe that death threat was hurtful. I certainly won't be doing that again.". More realistically, they'll never even see the blog posts in the first place. Patrick has 65,000 followers on twitter. And he is one of many well known public figures who spread the word whenever this kind of shitty thing happens. My condolences and finger-wagging are meaningless. And the victims are clearly not suffering in silence. This abuse is widely reported.

Blaming silence, blaming culture, blaming anything other than those who do it, is only serving to confuse these issues and enflame the situation. I've been thinking today a lot about things I've read in the past few weeks and the past few years, because these problems are not new, and it began to overwhelm me that no actual solutions are ever sought after. Patrick posts a link to the head of Twitter saying that they don't need any new tools to deal with harassment, and people comment on how terrible that is... and move on. We've cultivated an online culture where linking to something and "speaking up" about how it's bad is enough to satisfy people.

What if instead of all of the impotent articles condemning "gamerz" and "game culture" as somehow birthing these monsters, the powers of Kotaku and Polygon and Gamasutra combined to make some change in the real world. State and Federal police are technologically outdated and underfunded (infrastructure wise, not so much with weaponry as we've tragically seen) and are basically incapable of effectively pursuing and prosecuting online harassment. What if those sites petitioned their governments to rectify that situation. What if they showed how they're doing it, to make it easier for you to contact your local police and fight to have them better able to deal with online threats. What if they didn't stop until new laws were passed clearly outlining the steps that one can take to report this kind of violence.

What if they did anything at all to actually create positive change, rather than shaking their prose heads in disapproval, and then moving on to next week's harassment.

The sentiment behind "speaking up" is a good one, but unless you're actively working towards a tangible goal, you "might as well" be doing nothing.

I don't automatically assume that because one side is wrong, the other must be right. At no point can harassment be considered okay, but the kind of message being sent by the Alexanders and Sarkeesians is nearly myopic in scope. The readiness of so many people, maybe even a majority on the internet, to jump onto a bad ship so they can denounce a worse one is kinda saddening.

@wesleywyndam: These are the same reasons I don't say anything important most of the time. It's hard to change, when you hate and fear conflict. :(

Also, Anita is maybe not the best one to bring up. She has no idea what she's talking about half the time other than the most broad strokes generalizing.

I would like it if more people focused on building common ground between what they do agree on rather than trying to light each other on fire for the few things they don't.

I agree completely, you said it much better than I could have. Its sad that it seems like you aren't allowed to disagree with the application, even if you agree with the sentiment overall.

I'm not going to "shut up and listen". I'll have a discussion, but nobody wants to have a discussion -- including the people you listed. Perhaps especially them. So I'm not going to participate. I'll continue to enjoy my work and occasional gaming and let you all sort out your shit on all sides, because all sides are full of hypocritical people who employ bullying tactics in various forms and agenda-pushing and I won't support that even if I agree with the sentiment of "the cause".

Also, where have you been the last five years? This post is a little reminiscent of the last couple years when all the reddit kids heard about Snowden and started posting all the time about privacy and personal liberty issues, as if they were the first people to fucking come upon the concepts and that they weren't just falling into something everyone had been aware of, talked themselves into exhaustion over, and grown tired of and moved on from for the prior twenty or thirty years.

Since nobody wants to have discussions (on any side), I'll just lay out my thoughts and move on -- because there's no other fucking point in exhausting myself over this unending and unchanging bullshit: Anyone should be able to work in gaming and tech that wants to if they have the ambition and proven talent. Anyone should be able to play video games who wants to play video games. Video games that give a wider representation of the people who play them are great as it only leads to greater inclusiveness, which is what much of geek life is all about. It's okay for video games to have busty sexualized women (or men) in them. It's okay to employ various traditional tropes in your games. There's nothing wrong with that and you are not a lesser person for consuming it. It's okay to have other things explored in gaming, too, and development isn't a zero-sum game, so having more representation should not in any way detract from the availability of other content. Everyone should knock their shit off and be nice to each other and stop calling each other feminazis and misogynists (and you are not doing anyone any favors by labeling everything short of excessive adulation as "misogyny".

Okay. There. Now, I'm-a go on with being a grown ass adult and do grown ass adult stuff (and not so grown-ass adult stuff, like play video games when I'm not busting my ass working). The rest of you can carry on the bullshit for another century, for all I give a fuck. I'm not going to participate in attacking women or gays or anyone else. I'm not going to participate in shaming men or group-attacking them because they shared a different opinion that while not hateful is perhaps not in-line with group-think. I'm going to let people have a diverse range of opinions on all sides, as long as they aren't actively denying opportunities to people or actually harming them.

I'm going to continue to give money to people like Zoe Quinn on Patreon, as I always have. I'm going to continue backing stuff that Max Temkin does. I'm going to continue financially supporting GaymerX, like I have before. I'm going to continue backing cool independent projects backed by people who are a break from the norm, simply because I would like to see more variety in gaming even if i have no intention of ever playing said games -- like Sentris and Bloom. I'm going to generally continue not giving a fuck, because I'm too fucking old to be an idealist wrapped up in this college sophomore back and forth bullshit that the internet (and especially gaming journalism) can't stop indulging in.

@iburningstar: I don't want to hijack this thread and turn it into something it isn't, but I think your post shows exactly what the OP is talking about, and what we have to do better on. I have to ask you: why are you so angry? You don't have to agree with Anita. She probably is wrong about GTA3. But why do you care so much that you have to have a problem "straight up with Anita?"

"manipulative and disingenuous?" "Fuck her?"

Where does this come from? Why not write a counter point that doesn't have personal insults? Why not just ignore it? I ignore things that I think don't add anything to the game industry. Like IGN.

I know we are all passionate about games, but I think we'd also like it if there was a lot less yelling going on. That goes for everybody.

I pretty much exhausted all my talking points on this subject in the thread that was locked (why, I still don't know) but I'll just say, yeah, I agree.

Yeah, I broadly agree. I might nitpick some minor points here and there, but they're ultimately unimportant since I agree with the main assertion - it's a problem that's clearly not going to go away unless we as a collective community do something about it. Obviously not all of us have the clout to make huge, concerted pushes, but on an individual level we can all still confront these opinions among friends or acquaintances.

I still have a hard time understanding why some people feel the absolute need to be dicks to other people, both generally and on the scale of actual threats and insults on the levels aimed at female devs and writers recently. It is perhaps a quality of human nature that we cannot change, but we can absolutely still fight it and keep it from destroying the lives of good people.

So TotalBiscuit just pit up this blog post a few hours ago :http://blueplz.blogspot.ie/2014/08/this-game-supports-more-than-two-players.html

He pretty much nails it. He has somehow managed to look down on all this like some kind of british Buddah and express the most reasonable and well thought out points I have read on the subject. Seriously, give it a read.

Have you sent this to Patrick? I imagine he might know about this already but it certainly seems like something he would consider putting in Worth Reading.

This issue is not about "discussions". Because of your gender, you can not be trusted to have this discussion. You are expected to be silent and accept what is told to you and make it a part of who you are. If you speak up or raise any questions or concerns or demonstrate any variance of any kind, you will be shouted down and trampled over as if you were the worst of the worst of shitty internet trolls who harass people (whether on principle, which is frankly quite rare -- or opportunity, which is almost all of them).

Unfortunately, that attitude doesn't truck with me. While I support the sentiment, I do not support the mentality, attitude, or tactics of many, simply because "we share the same sentiment/cause". That means I am not wanted as part of the discussion and am seen as "the enemy". Because I might say, for example, "I support diversity, opportunity, and inclusion of anyone, but I don't think throwing labels around just to shut people up and avoid having to engage in meaningful dialogue", I would be attacked for that and considered "the enemy". Nevermind that I otherwise support (including financially and otherwise) the same general issues and am empathetic to people who are mistreated or feel under-represented. Nevermind that I am otherwise a friend of people who want things to improve. That I would dare raise any questions or have any differentiation in the group-think and group-behavior means that I am the fucking enemy.

Frankly, that is my inherent problem with the whole thing. It feels disingenuous and I'm not willing to be a part of the support structure of people who employ tactics I find very off-putting, just because we share a common interest or ideology. I'm not willing to make the "well, you're being shitty, but the ends justify the means" compromise. Instead, I'd rather support the concept and not align myself with people or groups I might have a bad taste for in my mouth, simply because we share a common interest. Sort of the way I'm a libertarian, but not a Libertarian. Or the way I'm an atheist, but not an /r/atheist.

@Branthog I could mot agree with you more. Honestly, the TB article I linked above is remarkably close to what you are saying also. I objected to being grouped in with rapists on twitter and got a sea of abuse from "liberal" people, condemning me and calling me an MRA which I thought was some kind of army ration. After that? No sir. Even the slightest hint of a tinfoil hat and I am out of the conversation. If people are not willing to discuss this issue properly using the rules lf basic human decency, then they deserve to be ignored and I will tune my ears to the frequency of rational thought.

Yo, turn Twitter off.

You'll regain some faith in humanity that way.

It's not just gamers. It's fucking social media. Brings out the worst in people-

@splodge: Thanks for posting that. I've been looking for a reasonable perspective on all of this and you finally provided one.

@branthog: If that happens, it's shitty. But I don't think it really happens all that often. I believe it's perfectly acceptable for anyone to raise questions in a respectful way and not be labeled "the enemy." If anyone tells you that it's not, they're wrong.

We're not allowed to talk about this issue. What if someone got their feelings hurt?

That identifies a large problem with this whole issue. It's similar to politics. I am neither a democrat nor republican and while I share a few tenets of each platform (social liberty and fiscal responsibility, primarily), I do not blindly endorse or support either group. Therefore, I am abhorrent to each. Both only want me to be entirely faithful and unquestioning to the cause.

Likewise, I do not support agree with the crowd of harassing and attacking assholes at all. To them, I am an SJW. However, I do not blindly and entirely support the "social justice" people, either -- not because I have something against equality and opportunity and treating people according to merit, but because of their actions. Actions like condemning someone based on an anonymous tumblr post, because of their gender (and stating that is their reasoning). Actions like dismissing, ignoring, silencing, moderating, or shutting down anyone who would raise even the slightest question or pose even the lightest of disagreement to the overall sentiment of the whole navel-gazing crowd. To them - no matter who I am or what I do, but simply because I might have the audacity to not agree with their tactics or words or every action - I am an MRA.

It is all or nothing. No room is afforded for critical thinking or disagreement on any elements. (Worse, there are a great many people who will read what I just wrote and twist it around to imply that I secretly just want to be a misogynist and am just finding ways to justify oppressing people and silencing them so that women can't... like.. play Bioshock or something).

So why should I play the game? Why should I support people like that, actively? I'll just let them beat each other senseless in the back seat of the car, while I turn the radio up.

One reason I do not participate in social networking or twitter or any other bullshit like that.

I took issue with something Jeff Cannata said on DLC, this week. Or, rather, I didn't take issue with it -- I just did not understand why he gave emphasis to one issue while appearing to ignore a very similar issue a few weeks earlier where the only differentiating factor seemed to be gender. I was simply curious, because I felt that both were important and both were handled incorrectly, but one demonstrated a great deal of hypocrisy which disturbed me and made me feel those people were very dishonest, after all.

I wasn't really even asking him "hey, why are you so biased, jerkface?!". I was actually asking him for his insight into why the rest of the enthusiast press and industry reacted as they did. I felt he was someone that would answer me and do so, whatever his viewpoint, in a very sincere way.

If this were initiated via twitter or even another longer form of social media, he would have inferred all sorts of things about me and probably responded in a snarky and dismissive way. I probably would have interpreted his response as another example of how people who purport to care about issues of inclusivity and representation don't want to have a discussion -- even with those who support those things -- with anyone who dares question them at all (and I am someone who has questioned all authority any chance he can, dating back to childhood and I have the school documentation to sadly prove it).

We probably would have both been angry and dissatisfied with the exchange and it would have brought in countless people who were watching the conversation to bicker and attack each of us and each other.

Instead, we had a nice exchange at the deepest hours of night. It was very respectful and civil. We found agreement on most things and shared how we felt different about certain elements of both stories and why we felt that way. We did not sway either one's mind - but I think we came away with a better understanding of why one of us felt more concern for one of the two situations while the other felt equal concern with both. ... And that was my entire goal. The entire reason I wrote to Cannata was not to force my opinion down his throat or have my own swayed, but to understand.

This is not an opportunity that can be capitalized upon through social networking. Certainly not twitter. Twitter and tumblr and places like that are where anyone you even lightly disagree with anything on becomes the mortal enemy and everyone who falls into that crowd is placed into the same category as the most vile and direct internet shithead. All of a sudden, if you ask me a question that implies you don't completely agree with me about something, I construe the worst from it and put you in the same box as the person who only tweeted me "hey, fucktard, suck balls you piece of shit, I know where you live".

It's actually pretty common to see this exact scenario play out on Twitter. It's very easy to get caught in the crossfire of tweets between SJWs and MRAs shouting past each other. Neither side wants the other to win, so they just get more and more volatile. I'm not even against the so-called SJWs, but members of that crowd can be incredibly hostile and yet completely oblivious to how hypocritical it is to fight bigotry while engaging in their own discriminatory behavior. The whole thing just makes me want to throw my hands up, Neil deGrasse Tyson style, and back away from the battle of the badasses. There is nothing to be gained when both sides are just in the middle of an internet shouting match. It's an episode I feel we've been through before, and we'll likely go through again, because ultimately nothing gets resolved.

Seconded. It's immensely refreshing to see a high profile person try and cut through the divisive nonsense to try and engender an actual discussion. I'm not familiar with TotalBiscuit at all really, but he concisely summed up my entire frustration with all of these issues in a very positive way.

I've felt shitty for days, feeling that the voice of reason (or at least a voice that could be heard above the screaming from all sides) regarding all of this stuff has been finally snuffed out. That essay helped a lot.

I still don't like Leigh Alexander and it has nothing to do with her being a woman.

Also, Twitter is alright.

Her work has been disappointing as of late, in my opinion. I like some of her old stuff a lot though.

Not long ago, I witnessed a vocal person from the inclusion crowd posting publicly to another about a third person's comment. The third person's comment was rather inquisitive as opposed to baiting. It seemed sincere. The vocal person dismissed it and used it as something to laugh at while they belittled the conversation points of "those people".

I made the mistake of speaking up and saying that while their point was true, they should not have dismissed the person who made the original comment and that by holding their comment up as something to ridicule and score points among their internet-peers with, it could have been a moment of meaningful discussion and potential understanding. I implied that using it as a moment to ridicule someone and (probably) falsely associate them with "the MRA crowd", they were actually the ones demonstrating a pathetic discussion tactic.

The response? I immediately received a link to False Equivalence article on Wikipedia and another person told me that I was wrong for suggesting that because both did something, they were both "equally as bad". That wasn't something I did -- and I don't think that it is right of them to assert that because one side is "way worse", it affords you plenty of room to be "shitty, but not as shitty as those other guys". Then there were countless additional replies calling me an MRA, a misogynist, telling me I should educate myself, telling me I am what is wrong with society, etc, etc, etc. Nevermind that I was following these people because I share an interest in what they do and the common interest of inclusion. I dared raise my eyes to look into those of an alpha of the group and the alpha felt the need to beat me down, regardless of justification, to prevent anyone else from ever challenging their viewpoints and statements. They were followed by the rest of the smaller monkeys running up and hitting me with sticks.

I would not feel good about myself if I supported one group demonstrating asshole behavior just because they were not reaching the level of assholery that the other group was. That is a childish justification and I won't be a part of any support of people like that, even if we share a common interest.

@branthog:

(MODS: This is not Youtube spam, this is social commentary.)

Pretty much that.

(Also, what's up with all these people disallowing embedding..? Of content they don't even own...? Sheesh.)

I in no way condone death threats and legit harassment. That being said the people that continue to through a fit about "misogyny" in video games are just as bad as the people that tell Tarantino that his movies are too violent. Let the creators create what they want. If you don't like it don't play it, but don't act like somebody has to pander to you to enjoy games more.

@wesleywyndam: As someone with similar problems: it's good of you to speak up, duder. I'll never tire of hearing more voices in a discussion.

From what I've seen the comunity around video games is similar to a hornet's nest. If you poke at it for some time you are bound to be stung.

Leigh Alexander has the habbit of making exagerate generalizations about mens and video games, talking about conspiracies of man nerds and such, so there is no surprise about the amount of vitrol she receives.

Anita Sarkeesian is a amateur gaming journalist/persona that just like any other persona suffers from excessive exposition and attention, and thus is threaten by the extra bored bad intended user on the internet with extra time on his hands.

But to the credit of the market, if you're a man and do the same thing you receive the same feedback as a woman, appart from the sexist slurs. Just look at Phil Fish.

The really stupid thing about all this is that games are organically becoming more inclusive anyway, as in my opinion is society in general. In amongst all the noise this week I read a tweet from a Bungie dev who was saying they invited Anita to give a talk at the company a few years ago. So it's safe to presume that Destiny was influenced in some small way by what she said. Now I don't see people yelling about how that game is "censored" or full of SJW ideals.

If Anita and others had gone around speaking to devs and publishers directly things would have gone a lot better. Certainly better than it has gone. I mean walking into a community of people who where minding their own buisiness and saying " Hey!, you don't know me but this thing you all love, it sucks for a number of reasons, and if you don't 100% agree with me then you are part of the problem" Was never going to end well.

@koolaid: If you want to know where my frustration with it comes from it comes from a year of people praising her and taking her very seriously. I think she more often than not takes the discussion in the wrong direction. A lot of it has been talked to death, you can go to the various threads about her and her video series for that, but my stance has always been that there are two extreme waring factions here and I don't like either one. There are people in the middle who have made a lot of very valid points and intelligent observations. It just all gets buried underneath layers and layers of vitriol. If I come off as being extremely hostile, then I'm sorry. I don't mean to be. I do resent the idea though that she and Leigh are considered the enlightened voices of progress. They come off to me as being inflammatory, condescending, and dismissive. In sort of the same mocking way as shows like the Big Bang Theory. Something that tries to act like it is one of us and is suppose to represent us, all while having a very negative and mocking tone. I'm offended by that. And the worst part is that I am apparently a bad person for being offended.

I remember when her series started up and how strongly the internet reacted. I remember having problems with her first video. I felt she over generalized some things and other things were viewed slightly out of context. Others felt the same way. Still, I appreciated that she was at least trying to get something done. However, from seemingly out of nowhere, to me at least, came this horrible force that said you can't be critical of her and if you are then you are pro rape and hate women. I was flabbergasted. I kind of understood where they were coming from, though, because while she was trying to get the project off the ground there were a lot of people throwing as much hate and hostility at her as they possibly could. They become a sort of counter terrorist squad for her. Then as time went on they started to view everyone who disagreed with them as a terrorist. Even if they had logical points backed up by facts and sound reason. Or maybe I should say they were more like the Scarlet Crusade from WoW. Once really noble and well intentioned but zealotry took hold and now they view everyone as the enemy. Then more videos were released and I found more and more problems with her. I started to feel like she came to a conclusion and then did the research to back it up, instead of the normal scientific approach of the opposite order. By this point it has become a battle between internet asshats. Both sides getting worse and worse. At a certain point it became really confusing because I could no longer tell who was the lesser evil. SJW's used bigotry and discrimination to fight off the bigotry and discrimination from the opposing side. One side is disgusting to me and the other side labels me as one of the enemy, and may actually be more hateful then the people sending death and rape threats.

What the fuck is even going on anymore? Branthog's post up above is really interesting to me because it made me remember something. It made me start thinking about that first Men In Black movie. There is a bit in there where K says something along the lines of "A person is sane and logical, but people are stupid."

A-fucking-men.

I used to read her pieces back when I had a subscription to EDGE, but they were usually uninteresting.

Everything I've read about Sarkeesian though makes her a) seem like a terrible person, and b) invalidates pretty much everything she has ever said. Her arguments are often times (not always) complete nonsense. I can't ever support someone like that, no matter how (theoretically) good their intentions are.

Indeed he does.

P.S. 30fps still sucks

Mhmm. I concur.

Why are you calling this an open letter? It's a forum thread on a videogame website. I get you want to be impactful, and try to "make a difference" but let's call it what it is.

That was easily the best article I've ever read about the subject.

I'm getting so tired of this. Maybe because here in Italy the last two years the political discussion has been dominated by a party who propose the same identical false dichotomy "if you're not with us you're against us", so i'm used to all this. The radicalization of the "discussion" has left me only with the loss of respect for many many people and the idea that i cannot raise any point to meaningufully improve my understanding of things. I'm a fairly modern liberal man living in a western country in 2014, i feel the need to discuss inclusionary topics but i can't find a place where i can write my thoughts without them being hijacked and being put together with some MRA who believe women are somehow endangering his "masculinity" or a 70's second-wave feminist stuck in "patriarchy", "culture of rape",etc. I see articles on how the TYFC indiegogo has borned an "incon to spite feminism" (cit.) and i weep inside (like if a feminist would contribuite to a pro-lifer's project with money just to spite a competing pro-lifer group -_-') instead of being able to read an article rejoicing the fact that more women have an opportunity to enter the videogame industry.

I'll just go back to vote with my money and simply gloss over this kind of bullshit: last month i backed Sentris and pre-ordered The Witcher 3; the fact that someone might have a problem with a queer woman developing games or someone else will write bullshit articles on how the witcher team portray women (because it will have naked busty women and the chance to sleep with sex workers in game; and i already know that some people who are at the front of the twitter storm now are gonna have an issue with that) will mean jack-shit to me and i will continue to do that.

This. A hundred times this.

Good on TB for writing that. Very well thought out! Also, surprisingly entertaining to read for such a long text on a dry subject. I actually realized I've never read much more writing than a couple of posts and tweets by him.