If your “movement” is mostly filled with women-hating, rape-threatening, gonna bomb a school if you have “X” speaker, then your movement has been taken over. It’s been co-opted. And it’s become the rally group for haters, and only that. Any legitimate goal your group purports to have has just become a footnote. Now all your group stands for is hate. It has in essence morphed into a hate group. And it puts out hate speech and calls for hate crimes. Cyber hate crimes that become real life targeted hate attacks have no place in reasonable, adult discourse. Ever. Seriously.
By: Dan Iggers
Just a few years ago, gamers were all up in arms about having the public correlate violence and death in real life to violence and death in games. They wanted ZERO correlation between the violence in games giving rise to violence in fact. Now, those very gamers are threatening violence… wait for it… because of… games (and game reviews, development and other game related activities). That’s right. See how far they’ve come, baby?
It makes me sad that having women FINALLY become more involved in gaming and the gaming world, only to have their voices stifled, some have left the game development field, some have fled their homes (after personal addresses and the like were leaked on a forum), and others have had vicious attacks against them via the internet turn into real life rape and death threats against them and any institution who supports them. All because some guys don’t like girls playing in their sandbox.
Many are saying to ignore the threats. But as a woman, you can’t. We face violence almost daily. We might not actually encounter said violence. But I guarantee every woman has everyday thought about who is surrounding her when she uses public streets, transportation, goes into a garage, an alley, or just really anywhere. Women have to far more vigilant in guarding their personal security than a man does. I don’t think men even understand this level of caution. To make it more under stable, I would liken it soldiers who are always scanning the environment for enemy forces. Women constantly scan their environment for potential perpetrators of crimes against women. Cause not only do we have to be afraid of the same criminals as men- pick pockets, purse/wallet/bag thieves, car jackers, murderers, etc. We are targeted by criminals for those crimes which can only be committed against women. As a result, most women live a heightened sense of vigilance that is ALWAYS present.
And shit. Its fucking games.
Some are saying how much damage can a 13 yr old pimply adolescent boy cause? Most make threats and wouldn’t ever leave their homes or high school to actually DO anything. Seriously, that is a stupid fucking argument. And quite frankly, dangerous. Because if these were truly 13 year old’s, then yeah. But I don’t think the vitriolically spewed hate crimes are being committed by teenaged boys with too much time on their hands. No, I think these are socially retarded ADULT men with serious personal issues. I’m not sure if they’re not getting laid enough- or ever, or if they felt safe from female encroachment in their lonely little rooms staring at a computer or TV screen for hours on end. I’m not sure of the full extent of their sad little lives. But I don’t think that ignoring these hate mongers is the solution. Besides, it’s been tried. It didn’t work.
Again. Games.
There are a handful in “that” group who keep trying to take the message back to where it’s not hate filled crazy verbal garbage. But no one hears you. Not anymore. You didn’t oust the haters in your group, and now the original non-haters and any non-hating message is drown out and colored over by the voices of hate. No one hears any other message. And nothing anyone says at this point makes that different. It’s a fact. And at this juncture, I don’t care what else you and your hate filled group have to say. About anything, really. I’ve heard enough. The cacophony of hate speech, hate threats, hate crimes, just plain ol’ hate doesn’t allow for any other sounds to get through. The hate-filled voices of your group have come to stand as the “speakers” for your group. It’s over. Give up the ghost. No one will believe you when you say otherwise. I don’t.
Trying to navigate a male-dominated society is hard. There are mine fields all over. Glass ceilings, unequal pay, diversion form certain fields to hidden biased channeling of “female” talents into “female” professions and more. In our personal lives, being insecure in our non-professional relationships because we are physically not as strong as men and are targets for rape, assault and abuse just because we are women. That’s not to say that physical abuse of women doesn’t happen in the work place, it just normally doesn’t in such explicit ways as say a street crime against a woman as she walking home. In other words, a woman getting her ass beat at work isn’t the norm. However, it all overlaps in this particular instance. A layer of rage against women, hate-filled, female-targeted attacks is the unfortunate joining of what we face in our personal relationships with our professional lives, if you’re a female in the gaming industry. We were already screwed in both the professional and personal aspect of our lives. Layering what we face daily as we fear for our physical safety on top of the discrimination we face in our choice of profession means that there just isn’t anywhere that it is safe to be a women and be secure in her person and body. Before this, most women just faced non-violent professional attacks. This campaign against women gamers, game developers, game journalist has melded the physical threat we face in day-to day life with the shit we get on the job. It’s just fucked all the way around. And again, nowhere are we physically safe. Not on the streets, not at home, and now, not at work in our chosen field.
We are supposed to be moving forward as a society. It just seems like when the status quo is rocked in anyway that benefits women (without the corollary that anything that helps women must necessarily hurt men) is seen as threatening and, therefore, physical threats of violence are okay. Here’s the deal unless your main reason for being is to fuck women over, then nothing a woman does to doesn’t do should impact any male person to the extent that death and rape threats are necessary. Female success doesn’t necessitate male failure. The world doesn’t work that way. It never has. One persons success doesn’t impact another person’s failure (well, unless they are in a head-to-head competition. But that’s something else entirely).
Dude, if you can’t deal with women don’t engage with real ones. Just keep interacting with the fake ones in the vids. At least there, the rest of us can ignore you. Like we’ve always done. Getting notoriety based on death and rape threats and hate crimes might not be the best way to make your foray into the real world. And if you think it is, your social retardation extends so far that none of the rest of us WANT you to interact with us. Really, we’d prefer if you stayed your miserable lonely, adult loser wanna be man self living in your own small, little world. Alone. Forgotten. In isolation. Obviously, that’s all these man-babies can handle. Real woman scare them. Scare them enough to make threats of physical violence because they can’t match women when it comes to mental and verbal arena.
Isn’t there a saying about losing an argument if you’ve resorted to name-calling. Well, guess what it’s called if you have to resort to threats of violence and hate? You haven’t just lost the argument, y’all have lost your every-loving minds, all credibility and your toe-hold on a former male-dominated industry. You’ve lost public respect. And hopefully, those making these threats will also lose their freedom and get stuck in a small cell.
