Longknife

People who are outspoken feminists getting rape and death threats definitely constitutes as an unwelcoming environment for feminists, in my opinion. Self-identified gamergaters in the appropriate *chan sites talking in great detail about bombarding them with those rape and death threats constitutes as GG being responsible for it. (Not in the collective responsibility sense - ie. every gamergater is personally responsible for the actions of those individuals -, but in the sense of "some people who are gamergaters do send those things".) Anyone on the internet with an opinion gets rape and death threats. Or, maybe that was just me. At the very least that's been my experience and has always been my impression of the internet. Yesterday a guy in a TF2 server I was playing started swearing at me and telling me he was gonna rape my parents. Not jokingly either, cause he talked **** any time he or I died. I never said a word to him either. In retrospect, I should've recorded and uploaded it.

What harassment? That's exactly the problem. The cases of harassment are completely unnamed, save for claims by people proven untrustworthy such as Wu and Quinn. And no, girl gamer logging into game and being hit on =/= girl developer being sexually harassed at work. There's a big difference between logging on a game server with people ranging from ages 10-30 and there's some socially awkward yahoo, and someone working at a company and being expected to act a certain way if they value their paycheck. Name one example of a female developer who faces harassment that hasn't been proven to be full of snot, and the "well they don't speak up because they fear further harassment" argument doesn't fly; we cannot be held responsible for their unwillingness to provide the evidence and communicate. Mercedes Carrera and some friends of hers (if I recall correctly, she knew another woman or two in STEM, I could be wrong here though). And before you say "that's just one person," she happens to be the only example we have. She's the only one to have spoken up and said her opinion based on her experiences in the field. I didn't name her because I thought we all knew she was the only STEM woman to comment on the matter. Exactly, the burden of proof is on you here. There was nothing unfair or vicious about the ways Quinn and Wu have been exposed. I mean let's be real here: these two are extreme cases and both seem like chronic liars. There was not a situation of "they're women claiming harassment so let's not trust them." No, it was a result of Quinn's story inciting journalists to rush to her aid to try and bury the topic and Wu insisting on inserting herself into the matter when no one knew who she was. It's very telling that I do not even remember the name of the female developer who spoke out to say not all developers support GamerGate, nor do any of us: because she did nothing wrong and therefore was never discredited nor harassed or anything. She merely had an opinion, as is her right. And even if you wish to argue "well you probably didn't hear about the harassment she got," again the burden of proof would be on you and again, if that's the kind of mentality women are feeding themselves and thus motivating themselves not to pursue a gaming career, would that be the responsibility of GamerGate or of the journalists and the narrative that encourages women to believe lots of harassment goes on that we're not seeing? The answer is simple: provide proof, and it's the responsibility of GamerGate. Without proof, it's the journalists who are responsible for scaring women off. If you lie about someone and scare people off from talking to them, then you are guilty and you are the jerk. If what you say is true and that the person is a pedophile or whatever, then that person is responsible themselves for people choosing to avoid them. It all comes down to that, and as I've said, I do not see any significant harassment going on from GamerGate. If you want to say the conflict as a whole from both sides is scaring people off as both sides are capable of minor cases of harassment here and there, then again, you cannot hold GamerGate solely responsible for scaring people off. Hell, I'd argue GamerGate's position would - in another analogy - be akin to if someone wished to blame the Ukraine from dissuading tourists from visiting it because it's in conflict with Russia. So the Ukraine was supposed to lie down and take it...? Again, until it's proven that the narrative of "gamers are misogynist harassers and jerks" is absolutely warranted, then it's the journalists selling that narrative - not the people speaking out against said narrative - that should be held accountable for women avoiding the field. I could make the claim right now that you are a pathological liar and a sociopath, for example, and that everyone should avoid conversing with you for their own good, and you would quite reasonably be mad at me for making such outrageous claims. If people look onto our little quarrel and determine they're going to avoid you (and perhaps me aswell), are you at fault? Is it your fault people do not converse with us? That simple, really.

I am going to both belittle and ignore that video For the simple the fact that the video is guilty of doing exactly what he accuses others of doing. He basically accuses journalists and SJW of being responsible for that inaccurate episode of Law & Order....WTF. I will tackle this: how are they not? They've encouraged a hysterical culture of fear and hate. They've written articles telling everyone how terrible gamers are in their minds, and they've constantly discussed any threats they've gotten. Anita has made no mention of (or effort to stop) that Brazilian Celebrinando guy that GamerGate alerted her to, and Wu has been caught multiple times harassing herself. She's currently claiming she received a bomb threat for if she attends some convention coming up (PAX?) and yet has shown no evidence for it to the people she SHOULD be showing it to, such as the FBI and the people hosting the convention. Direct responsibility in the sense they wrote it themselves, no. But responsible in the sense they encouraged this sort of outlook on the gaming community? Absolutely. If not them, then who would be responsible? The Law and Order episode falls directly in line with their narrative; no one else would've suggested (suggested indirectly, mind you, not saying they spoke) to Law and Order that gamers hate women and are constantly attacking them. So if not them, then who's responsible? It's clear as day they hold some responsibility. So clear that, by my recollection, two developers jumped on twitter and started bashing games journalism and naming them responsible for this culture of hate gaming now has to deal with. Have you considered this could be the responsibility of the people claiming gaming is unwelcoming to women? It's the very same argument STEM is now using: STEM workers are claiming the only people keeping women out of STEM are those claiming STEM is a hostile environment towards women, thus scaring women from even attempting. In reality, we've not seen a single STEM worker comment and say they were treated poorly in the field. Should also be noted - and don't mean to be a **** here - that the very women claiming gaming is a hostile environment towards women? Yeah, they made piss poor games that no one buys. It's an excuse they're feeding themselves to deny any failures on their part. It's something every human being constantly attempts to do and that we all need to watch out for; looks like they're not watching out for it. By my recollection we've seen a grand total of one woman in a major gaming company who merely said the Xbro guy "does not speak for all of us." I don't even remember her saying she gets harassed or treated poorly or anything, she merely wanted to provide a voice stating not all game developers support GamerGate. I also have to point out that I find it odd that in the above example, Bruce wishes to claim the journalists should not be held responsible for Law and Order choosing to reflect their narrative. Here, you wish to claim GamerGate is responsible for women choosing to work somewhere else. Not hypocritical since you're two different people, just something to think about since in my opinion, it can't really be both. As a small tangent not really relevant to the above but relevant to claims of harassment and threats currently being spouted by Wu and the like (just posting this cause I've wanted to post about this, not so much directed at you aluminum so you don't get confused ), I would like to say that yes, people lie for attention. I believe I saw in the news just last week that a woman in the UK is facing jail time because she faked her own bully and wasted police resources over it. Reading that story actually reminded me that there was a day I was playing TF2 with some friends and we were all logged into a teamspeak server. Some random girl showed up claiming she had just been kicked off another teamspeak server because she was a female gamer, and she sounded rather timid while saying so. I said none of us care about that and she's welcome to chill out here and play with us, and she was quick to want to join us. Up until that point, only I had spoken. Not long after, my two female friends in the channel spoke up too. Suddenly the new girl went from social to quiet, and quietly disappeared completely after a round or two. Looking back on it, I have to wonder if she wasn't attention starved and thought being a girl gamer would get her attention. When she realized that it wouldn't, she hopped to the next channel. I've also recently started playing TF2 Highlander Lobbies, and they've got a giant mumble server set up for it that probably has 100-200+ people online at any given moment. A female friend of mine has told me she sometimes gets a sense of jealousy from this other female who has long played there before us, and I'd be inclined to say I sorta see it too. Let's be real here, two types of negative stereotypes do infact exist: attention-starved women and socially awkward guys. I've met both on that mumble server, and when a guy joins our channel, my female friend speaks and their reaction is "wait, she's a girl!?!" while having a sudden interest in holding her attention, yes, the other girl immediately seems to want to change the subject, get their attention back or get them away from my friend. Sometimes it's hilarious amusement where I get to watch the guy's pathetic attempts at woo'ing a girl as I ask myself "wtf why do these guys treat women like an alien race or something," other times...? Well, it's sad really. It's a testament to how imperfect humans are, and how flawed and mistake-ridden we are. As I said above, I think this more or less describes what drives people like Wu and Anita. It's not a clear disdain for actual misogyny in the industry, it's a cover for their own failures. Wu can't admit she's a failed game developer thusfar and needs an excuse to cover it, Anita has essentially sold out and created a business built upon half-truths and lies, and she needs that to keep going for her to get paid at all. But yeah, sorry if that last bit seemed a little all over the place. It's just something that's been on my mind in general about how we need to perhaps be more skeptical of people's claims in general. I for one for example do not bother giving Mike Cernovich the time of day because he seems like an idiot that makes claims he can't back up, but likewise, yes, I am going to be skeptical of any girl who claims there's rampant misogyny amongst gamers as she gives off an attention-starved vibe and can't give specific examples.

Don't confuse not believing it's a necessity with it being a bad thing. It's a simple yes or no question, there is no need for the defensive deflection. That's not a defensive deflection at all. What he's saying is diversity is always welcomed and always nice, but policing and trying to force diversity is not. We want to see Fallout 2 have Joanne Lynette because the developers want it to have Joanne Lynette, not because the developers feel pressured to meet a quota or something. They should make the characters as they please, and not make characters in an attempt to appeal to some whiny "progressive" journalists. To answer your example of Joanne Lynette, I could say isn't it nice that the King or Mr. House in New Vegas is white? Well, yeah it is, and not so much because omg white people = automatically amazing or something, but because that was the vision they had for those characters and they got made that way without any interference stifling their vision. And that's good. There is a big difference between welcoming and embracing diversity....and mandating and demanding diversity. It's as I've said before: no one here would take offense to Anita Sarkeesian actually creating a video game out of that proposed video game plot video she has up on her channel. We'd all welcome that she make it. But it's not happening. Instead she sits there with ties to games journalism and basically criticizes other games for not following her subjective idea about how games should be. No, let them make games their way and let the SJWs and feminists and the like make games their way. The problem only exists because the latter groups are not making games at all, and instead choose to sit there and whine and attempt to force others to mold their views to appease them, which ultimately only stagnates art and creativity.

I can certainly get behind that and have experienced people worrying on my behalf (who watch a lot of TV news incidentally), more than I worry myself. But as someone looking at GG objectively, I do see a lot of sensationalism on all sides - from fairly straight forward feminists agendas and/or misogyny, to big business corruption and nepotism... and while I can certainly understand the conclusions being drawn, I have to say that they often done so on rather flimsy evidence. And the entire debate seems to have been hijacked (and allowed to be hijacked) by the loudest 'I see a conspiracy!!' types. As a 'pro-GG', do you feel your platform is being taken over by the same kind of hate-infused narrative (from other pro-GGs)? edit: or rather, I guess my question is - what do the majority of 'pro-GG' see the issue as? From your perspective. In what way? Don't get me wrong, the conspiracy-happy crowd is definitely amidst GamerGate, but I would hardly say they've hijacked the debate. For example one little conspiracy I saw was that this was all a plot by that Common Core education system to integrate gaming into education or some crap. Read it, thought it sounded ridiculous, still is. You don't ever see that little conspiracy theory being the cornerstone of discussion though, because it's ridiculous. The stuff that does get discussed is, for example, Mark Kern's comments against the journalist actions and hopes that other devs will speak up and back him up.

[citation needed] Are you actually expecting GooberGrunters to do fact-checking? What you're dealing with here is, essentially, a paranoid conspiracy theory, and like most conspiracy theories, reason and facts are no match for it. Try convincing a 9/11 Truther that the World Trade Center wasn't brought down by a controlled demolition and see how much success you have. There's no convincing them that those windmills they're tilting at are not, in fact, giants in disguise. American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a famous essay titled The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which perfectly describes the attitude behind GamerGate. Are you aware GamerGate supporters are in the clear majority? You can use this thread series as a sample, you can reference a recent poll a website conducted where I believe the results looked something like 47% approve of GamerGate, 10% oppose, and 43% lacked knowledge or opinion on the matter? If you don't trust either of those, simply compare the subscription sizes of their respective subreddits, and you'll find GamerGate has about 6 times the numbers it's opposition has. You're calling a majority of people a bunch of conspiracy theorists. Secondly, I find it funny you want to reference an essay that cites the paranoid style of American politics, yet you wish to apply that to the people rather than to the political leaders themselves, or rather the entirety of the culture, media included. What I'm getting at? Case and point: recently I've gotten a very strange amount of American friends and family contacting me urging me to leave Germany and return to the US, because they fear for my safety with all the ISIS news. I sit there dumbfounded like "what the HELL are they talking about," they mention a bunch of people got beheaded, then when I look it up, it's in Libya or some crap. Initially, despite being American myself I wanted to discredit it all as "stupid Americans gonna stupid" and not recognize the difference between Germany and Libya, but I actually developed a theory after - of all things - seeing episodes of the British and American versions of Kitchen Nightmares back to back. Noted that the American version was sooooooo overdramatic, complete with dramatic zooms, sound effects etc, whereas the British version was treated far more like a typical critic job. Then it kinda hit me: I theorize the American news networks are sensationalizing ISIS stories to a far greater degree than other countries. I find this far more plausible than all of my friends and family just being complete idiots. And that's kind of the point of GamerGate. GamerGate has made it clear that a lot of these journalists wish to sell narratives. They report, sure, but they tend to report the parts that sell a specific narrative more than others. This is not hard to see, as you'll struggle to find a mainstream media report that covers GamerGate and actually provides GamerGate with a voice equal in size to it's opposition. No, the reports are typically largely bias towards the opposition, likening GamerGate to a hate mob. Compare this to a journalist liked by GamerGate such as David Pakman, and you will not see such unfair bias between his interviews with GG and anti-GG supporters. So yes, I do find your citation bitterly ironic, because I for one believe the media has a very large hand in the actions of a culture, and if you wanna talk about people being insanely paranoid or reactionary....? Perhaps it's because the media finds fear-mongering and hate-infusing narratives to be marketable, and guess who GamerGate is after? The media and their slanted narratives.

Noooooooooooooo~ My catchphrases... ;'(

Definitely in my list of "songs to play when I'm dying."

Video Link Such an amazingly perfect song to end a career on that it almost makes me wish they didn't make a comeback. Almost.

Much prefer this song without vocals.

There's a general lack of compassion and appreciation of the value of human life all over the place. It certainly doesn't help when those who some consider our leaders have the same kind of callous attitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_x04Gn3-2g Wow wtf this is awful. When did Hilary turn into such a scumbag?

Who was shouting wtf?

You are blatantly taking things out of context here. No one is saying this changes history. No one is saying Susan B. Anthony was a tumblroni who ran around telling cis men to check their privilege, she was a woman who recognized her natural born rights and rightly fought for them. No one is saying Malala is not an absolutely inspirational human being and - for my money - the Martin Luther King of our day and age. All we are saying is that the true feminists are needlessly fighting a losing battle. And for what? A word. A title. Why? Why do you insist on defending this word? Why not grab a new one? Yes I'm aware they have different divisions of feminism, but this is meaningless because every single one of those feminists wants to lay claim to the vanilla term "feminist" when put on national TV in front of a camera. Why do seemingly educated women like Emma Watson insist on holding the title "feminist" and thereby being lumped into the same group as the loons, rather than adopting a new word to distance themselves from the loons? If the answer is "why should she change her title, make the loons do it," then that is the logic of a child, and pro-tip: the loons themselves are children and will never ever ever abandon the word feminism. I realize there's a level of ridiculousness with statements like "why not call yourselves equalists" or the like because a change in title doesn't simply happen overnight, but at the same time, yes, we have hit a point where that vocal minority is driving the perception of the word. You do not blame the world for associating the word with the vocal minority, that's not how it works. The word simply becomes polluted, and it seems as though we live in a day and age where that ship is setting sail and - whether you like it or not - the word is developing a negative connotation. This means nothing to historians who write our history books or for the generation of 2255 who will read about feminists like Susan B. Anthony and Malala, but for you and me, yes, this means worlds. Again, I reiterate: why fight for a word? Words change meanings. This is how the world works. A hundred years ago if I called you a son of a b****, that might warrant a physical fight between you and I. Nowadays it can be anything from a sarcastic quip to a minor insult. Fifty years ago, the variant of the N-word now heard constantly in rap music would not be nearly as accepted and neutrally-received as it is now. Times change, so do words. There is no meaning, purpose or motivation to insist on a definition for a word, NOR is there any purpose in you sitting there and hoping that the entirety of the world adopt your meaning and your perception of the word. There's no way you can accomplish that, nor do you have any objective superiority with which to claim your connotation of the word is "better." I will keep asking "why." It's yet to be answered, despite how often I've brought this issue up. What purpose is there in Emma Watson fighting for a change of the word rather than adopting a new one? What purpose is there in you lamenting that it doesn't mean the same thing it meant a hundred years ago? It's a word. Stop caring about words, care about people. Care about teaching what a great person Susan B. Anthony was to your daughter, don't care about ingraining certain connotations for words into her mind where any deviance or change of the word is unacceptable.

Biology is just another patriarchal concept though.

I've touched on this before, but.... I'm sorry, but I think you're living in the past if you insist on the term or a specific connotation. Language is a fluid thing. Meanings change. It's the natural way of things. This does not mean history is being forgotten and that history books one hundred years from now will not use feminism in a positive light when discussing Susan B. Anthony and other pivotal women. This does however mean the term is no longer needed, relevant or neccesary in the world we live in today. We are not perverting or ruining feminism by regarding it as bad today, those that insist on carrying the name and dragging it through the mud are. We are not obligated to constantly clarify and show a level of respect for....a ****ing word on the grounds of it being a word that once brought about positive change. If this were the case, words like "equality" and "feminism" would be magic spells that silence any dissenting opinion and banish them to another realm. No, we are reacting just as we should. As I've said before, I do not see the need for reverence of this term, nor a desire to be associated with it. Let it die. The feminism you praise in your initial post did it's job. It's dead now, at least within first-world countries. The "feminism" women claim to be utilizing today...? I dare say these feminists would be incapable of sitting across from Malala Yousafzai without feeling a quiet sense of shame. Why feminists like Emma Watson and Christine Sommers insist on clinging to the term when it's perverted and warped by the likes of tumblr, Sarkeesian, and anyone with a lifetime supply of radical hair dye is beyond me. Just let the term die. Let it sleep. It's time to get new words to apply to the feminism we're encountering today, because it is nothing like the feminism you praise. The feminism you praise is now a chapter of history that will get it's due reverence in the history books, but this? This is a bunch of ****ing children hiding behind a term they don't even deserve to stand in the shadow of.

Can I just say I hate Noam Chomsky discussions because there's at least enough controversy surrounding the man and enough scientific discoveries by the man that he at least warrants SOME respect and recognition and understanding of who he is and what he does, yet educating oneself about the man is difficult because he is by far the most painfully excruciatingly boring public speaker to listen to? Not hating either, cause he himself admits this.

Back in the day Penny-Arcade had this comic-strip about **** wolves: <snip> Which caused great controversy to such a ridicolous degree that people where talking about boycotting PAX because they couldn't feel safe due to the strip allegedly trivializing rape. Media made a case about it and they (PA) had to apologize. But somehow God ascended from the heavens and let a guy named **** WOLF do an episode of SVU that clearly showed how stupid this narrative is to begin with. Great, now I need to find another reaction video good enough for this.

Btw, what's the joke behind **** Wolf? I missed that and didn't get the reference or what was funny about it, and I've been sick as a dog for days straight so may have missed the obvious.

Oh and while I'm at it and just cause Edmund got me thinking about video games I think qualify as art.... Screw you guys, Majora's Mask is art. Totally underrated Zelda title that broke the mold (heaven forbid) and had amazingly strong emotional impact with it's depiction of various characters and how they chose to cope with their final hours.

Binding of Isaac repre-****ing-sent: http://gamergate.community/t/danielle-mcmillen-plays-isaac-while-ed-gives-some-thoughts-about-gamergate/1275 I sure can pick 'em. :D Gotta admit too, it feels good to hear him mention he values artistic merit when not long ago, I was saying this is a game that holds artistic merit. It's good to hear it comes from the developer himself, an implication that it was all very much intended and not me finding symbolism where there wasn't any.

Well its starting to backfire now. The SVU episode has caused a backlash against the gaming press amongst major developers now, with high ups in Blizzard and Ubisoft coming out in favor now. It just seems like just a matter of time before the support leads to a spillover into the mainstream media. Source? I think I've seen both, but give me a second, I just woke up. Been sick as hell lately. I think the Blizzard guy's comment was more "thanks video games journalism for setting a narrative that allowed this" in regards to the episode and there is a Ubisoft guy who was supporting GG though I think Ubi has a bit of both. Could be wrong though but I'll try to find them.

I scoured the internet for an appropriate reaction video and I believe I finally found one: http://youtu.be/MNpkSyryQz4?t=5m15s (***Note that the rest of the video shows them playing Mortal Kombat so if you choose to stick around after the game footage restarts or skip ahead to see what they're reacting to, expect over-the-top levels of violence***)

Huh, I did check Kotaku myself, even turned my adblock off. Nothing. Did they seriously run out of advertisers? Of course, the moment I checked there was also an article about how Marvel has to kill off Peter Parker in the movies and make Spider-man a black guy now that they have limited rights to the character back. It's like a parody now. It's been that way for a while. Apparently the new Netflix Zelda should feature Link and Zelda as a lesbian couple. Honestly, all that fan art I've been seeing of female Link is a lot more interesting than the games have been since, well... The Adventure of Link on the NES, so hey, power to them. Majora's Mask was an absolute masterpiece, you are just gay. Majora's mask was bad, you don't have a leg to stand on. Not true, I still have my left leg.

Huh, I did check Kotaku myself, even turned my adblock off. Nothing. Did they seriously run out of advertisers? Of course, the moment I checked there was also an article about how Marvel has to kill off Peter Parker in the movies and make Spider-man a black guy now that they have limited rights to the character back. It's like a parody now. It's been that way for a while. Apparently the new Netflix Zelda should feature Link and Zelda as a lesbian couple. Honestly, all that fan art I've been seeing of female Link is a lot more interesting than the games have been since, well... The Adventure of Link on the NES, so hey, power to them. Majora's Mask was an absolute masterpiece, you are just gay.