TIME Entertainment Media Misogynist Online Abuse Is Everyones Problem Men Included The harassment against feminist #Gamergate critics is getting attention now. But the toxicity goes much farther in our culture.
I wasnt going to write about #Gamergate. Most of the video gaming world is outside my experience. I used to play more, when I had more time and hair, but now I only play a few tablet or iPhone games, and badly. (I get a 384 on Threes, its basically a national holiday.) Not my issue, I figured.
Weeks went on, and I kept seeing references to a culture war between gamers and gaming journalists, especially feminist critics of the industry, that had devolved into vile sexist harassment and death and rape threats. So I started reading, and to an outsider anyway, Gamergate led to a vast tangle of ancient grievances and offenses that seemed about as easy to unravel as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (For those interested, Todd Van Der Werffs explainer at Vox is one of the better Ive read.) That sounds awful, I thought. But again, not my area. Not my problem.
And then I read this terrific column by the Huffington Posts Maureen Ryan that made me realize that it is totally my problem, and everyones. The abuse that female game critics and journalists and developers have been receiving has been extremespecific threats to friends and family online, bomb threats, people hoping to drive women to suicide, the threat of a mass shooting at a talk video game critic Anita Sarkeesian was scheduled to give. But its not unparalleled.
In TV criticismin any cultural criticism nowthe price of having a female byline and an opinion is getting subjected to torrents of gender-specific, grotesque, sometimes frightening and threatening abuse, which men like me, in general, do not deal with to nearly the same degree. I panned CBSs Stalker. Mo Ryan panned CBSs Stalker. But only she received the e-mail, quoted in her column, that told her to shut the fuck up because MEN WE PREVAIL. (Disclosure, I guess: Im friendly with Ryan, as I am with a lot of TV critics, and I will confess to being biased against someone calling a friend a fucking misandry freak.)
And whats the offense here, in each case? What were the fighting words? Somebody made some videos criticizing gaming tropes as sexist. Someone said that a TV crime show was exploitative and abhorrent. Someone said, maybe dont harass women in the video game industry. This is the threat. This is the crisis.
Its the War on Christmas, essentially. (Theres an excellent piece in Deadspin drawing out the parallels between the political and the entertainment-industry culture wars.) Its the grievance of an identity group, already superserved by the larger culture, outraged that its service has become slightly less super. Their thing used to be the main thing, the default thing, the assumption. And now, if you point out that it is no longer the only thingas is the case, both in American society and in entertainmentwhy, youre persecuting them.
I have to assume that the people making death and bomb threats are, as the saying goes, a small but vocal minority. But this sense of disproportionate grievance is not so small. Put simply: someone saying mean things about a thing you like is not an assault on your liberties.
So someone made you feel bad for playing a video game that you like? Im sorry. Maybe there are valid arguments against them. Maybe you could make those arguments! But nobody is about to haul you off to the Misandrist Re-Education Camps because they caught you playing Assassins Creed.
Someone got all righteous about the TV shows you like? Maybe they asked why there arent more well-rounded women in True Detective or why there are so many dramas about brooding male antiheroes and serial killers or they said something was a rape scene that you didnt think was a rape scene? Thats unfortunate. But guess what? HBOs still making the second season of True Detective! Networks are still going to make all those antihero and serial killer shows! Youre still going to be on the receiving end of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline full of product tailored to your specific tastes. I think youll be OK!
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Misogynist Online Abuse Is Everyones Problem Men Included