lokilaufey

@mirado: Where have I been throwing everyone under the bus beyond condemning the movement as a whole? I even made a post several pages ago that explicitly said that not everyone participating is bad, just possibly misguided.

This is what I think a lot of people miss when they talk about how "well you just shouldn't give it the time of day!" By decrying the movement, they are showing solidarity for people who have experienced the brunt of the bad shit and that said harassers aren't welcome here. It's important. Honestly (as someone who has been harassed to hell and back by GGers and just bad gamers in general), this one article has made me feel so much more safe on this site than anything else could have.

@mirado That's the thing. I've been following this since the beginning and it is more organized than "just" a hashtag. It was on 4chan until moot started dissuading discussion, now it's on 8chan and has always been organizing attacks on Zoe, Anita, et al. through those boards and IRC. A lot of the people who don't realize the extent of the movement do only participate through the hashtag, but it is so much more than that.

Except GGers actively engage and encourage these people who have "co-opted" their movement and see Milo and Auernheimer (afore-mentioned white supremacist) as revered figures for their contributions to the movement. They also refer to CH Sommers, a trans-excluding rad-fem who knows pretty much nothing about games as the GamerGate "Mom."

Feminism is about all genders. Men, women, non-binary, everyone. "Regardless of gender you deserve respect" is literally what feminism is about. You can be both a feminist and a humanist.

Major figures in GG include Adam Baldwin, a homophobic right-wing nut; Milo Y., a transphobic, misogynist writer, and at least one white supremacist.

I won't even begin to go into everything wrong with TFYC and their "where women create games" project a.ka "a woman gives us an idea and we make it for her and get a chunk of the profits and she can give input but not actually work on it."

I think one of the most tragically ironic things about Gamergate is how it's effectively SHUT DOWN any real hope of actually contributing any sort of valuable criticism towards ethics and procedures in games press. Right now anyone who could or should address that topic from a position in the press is not going to be very receptive to critics because of everything going on for two months straight. They've seen their peers, colleagues, and friends torn apart and harassed and it has poisoned the well for however long.

I've been criticizing procedures in the games press for years, since before Zoe Quinn was even a name people outside of the indie community knew. Right now I think that it's best to wait to bring that discussion back up again after we get this shit over with, let people have time to put their lives together. I don't and never have supported GamerGate, as someone who was saw its inception as a hashtag created by a homophobic C-tier actor using it to discuss a controversy related to a woman's sex life that we had no business discussing. Do I believe everyone in the GamerGate movement is a horrible piece of shit? No, of course not. There are some people who genuinely think the movement is about ethics, as misguided as they are. Yes, misguided. There is so much factual evidence disproving that its anything more than a hate campaign cloaking itself under the claim of being an ethics movement.

I want to have solid discussions on ethics/procedures/etc but I eventually ended up having to private one Twitter account and delete the other. Any time I criticised the movement, even politely and without making massive generalizations, I would get flooded by angry dudes spewing vile shit and citing long debunked information with a staunch refusal to ever listen to anything I ever had to say, no matter how much "proof" I provided. Don't you dare tell me it's just "some people" because this has been the majority I've had to deal with since the first time I tweeted about what was initially posted about Zoe Quinn by her ex. The majority I've had to deal with for giving her support, Anita support, Jenn support. The majority I've talked to have been terrible.

There was a time I was comfortable being myself online. Now I can only feel safe being a username of indeterminate gender and race and background lest I be dogpiled by tons of dudes using my very existence as fodder for their arguments that they claim are about "ethics."

--- thankyou based Gerstmann & co.

edit: ALREADY RESCINDING MY "ONLY ONE THING TO SAY" BECAUSE

@neon25 said:

The more and more people pull Not All Gaters in comparison to a religion and it's extremists, the less I take it seriously. Please stop doing that, regardless of intent. Ya'll are NOT a religious group who has to deal with being treated like shit from racists and Islamophobes because of what terrorists have done.

This is a plea from someone who has to watch a cousin, who is a loving mother of five, get treated with a constant spew of racism and bigotry for converting to Islam.

@rorie: For what it's worth, I've only reported two comments so far because ya'll are doing a pretty great job of moderating the really awful stuff. If everyone wasn't so on top of things, I wouldn't be here still actively debating right now.

Much ♥ ♥ ♥ and good juju for everyone moderating this site