One of the cornerstones of #gamergate is the attempt to bully the gaming press into no longer covering feminist issues.

Schubert does not identify why this is the case. There are no sources to go with this statement. As a result, let’s look at responses from #GamerGate users. Twitter user Jenni Goodchild did a survey of GamerGate users and asked for major goal. Here are all of the responses on the first page:

2. What do you think the major goal of #GamerGate is?

Anon1: “To resolve the issues dug up during said media blackout(In this case, the rampant CoIs in the industry, potential racketeering of Indiecade, and so on). Also, to finally steer things towards actual journalism rather than clickbait articles.”

Anon2: “1. Free speech in regards to the gaming medium i.e. people should be allowed to criticize or voice an opinion without being shouted down
2. A better video game journalism industry i.e. one with integrity etc. etc.
3. Artistic freedom”

Anon3: “Attempting to combat that kind of backdoor dealing, but the larger part is pushing for more transparency in gaming media and press.”

Anon4: “It started out just looking for apologies, reform, and likely the firing of certain individuals from their respective media companies/sites. But now I think it’s evolved beyond that to bring gamers into a common cause against people who began to use gradeschool insults at us that we otherwise thought were also the same “geeks”, “nerds”, etc. Quite frankly though, I consider the Escapist our major victory, and possibly the only one we may have.”

@SHREKFLEX: “#gamergate is about something far more than a dozen hit piece articles declaring the death of a label people identified with. It’s about more than bad journalism. It’s about more than anybody involved in the incestuous indie gaming scene. It’s about a deep-seating, long-festering resentment between the gaming establishment (that is, the producers of video games and those who report on them) and its consumer base. Jeff Gerstmann getting fired for writing a non-favorable review is part of it. The infamously awful Mass Effect 3 ending, the crowd reaction, and the counter-reaction calling critics “entitled gamers” is part of it. Journalist Geoff Keighley being forced into selling Doritos and Mountain Dew is part of it. EA winning Worst Company In America twice in a row in an annual poll by consumer watchdog group Consumerist, and the gaming press counter-reaction calling gamers entitled yet again is a part of it. This is an issue that has been building and building and building for years and years, and the social media firestorm is a result of all of this.

To that end, #gamergate’s main goal is the removal of cronyism and corruption in the gaming establishment, in the professional game dev sphere, the indie game dev sphere, and the gaming journalism sphere. #gamergate is shining a light on the worst parts of the industry and its press that have long been ignored under the guise of video games not being a serious enough topic to discuss in this manner.”

Anon5: “To uncover and criticize the numerous uses of personal relationships and bias in order to further ones own ambitions.”

Anon6: “reforming game journalism, if people know each other they have to write about it, or preferably let someone that isn’t friends with the dev write the review, less click bait, less cronyism, let indie devs that aren’t friends with journalists have some time in the press as well. above all remind them we are their audience, not the publishers, not the developers, we are the people generating income for their sites, if they stop representing us, we’ll leave. many already have.”

Anon7: “Ending these biased opinions. You are hurting the industry at the end of the day because less and less people are trusting reviewers. If anything I prefer nintendo´s approach because with their Directs and Digital distribution they killed the bad reviews and let consumers decide for themselves. Now I want Microsoft and Sony to do something similar because I´m honestly tired of this situation.”

Anon8: “End the unethical behavior in journalism, and make an end to the agenda driven articles. I honestly never felt like a minority, I never felt like a lesser being, but when journalists start to push this pro-minority agendas I started to feel offended, which made it even worst when they said everyone on gamergate were white basement teenagers. Basically they killed who I am. [PixieJenni note: this is in reference to not being any of those things, I assume from context given earlier in responses]“

Anon9: “For every gaming news site to do what The Escapist did. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/12223-The-Escapist-Publisher-Issues-Public-Statement-on-Gamergate.4“

@Oboromusha: “The end of corruption and influence trafficking in the gaming industry. This breeds unaccountable elites, undemocractic culture and endlessly multiplying repression of free-speech and artisitical expression on every corner of the world. We will boycott gaming/tech journalism that subscribes to these one-sided views until it hurts their paychecks. They are free to quit this folly at any time and we will welcome them. As we do any other person.”

Anon10: “I think its twofold. The first is to deal with the corruption in the media. We want fair and unbiased as possible reviews and news without all the clickbait. We want to be informed about our hobby not whatever controversial thing the editors decided would bring in the most ad revenue. The second goal is to slay that persistent myth that gamers are inclusive white neckbeards that don’t want minorities/women in gaming. 48% of gamers are women, we have a huge tag showing this myth is false, and yet it still persists and is used against everyone that identifies as a gamer.”

Anon11: “Journalistic integrity. It is really tiresome to read things about “hey, there are no women in this game and that’s terrible”. That’s not a reason to think a game is terrible and to boycott it or something, sorry. Bad DRM, malware, shady devs that took the money and ran? Yeah, all those things, but not any of this inclusion bullshit. Not when that’s fully up to the designers of the game and shouldn’t count as a review.”

Anon12: “It started as being only about a possible conflict of interest with a certain writer of a big games website and someone whom he wrote about. But the mass sensorship about the topic, and the fierce attempts to make those trying to talk about it look like they were only interested in one’s person sexual life, when it clearly wasn’t about that, draw attention to the current state of gaming journalism, making people wonder why they were trying to defend this one person so much (especialy when they had no trouble making headlines about Max Temkin, based on a anonymous tumblr post). Then it got worse when these websites tried to fight back, calling these people names like ‘nerds’, ‘misogynists’ and ‘neckbeards’, focusing on the few bad apples and ignoring completely the issue, trying to refocus it. Then this war between gaming media and the readers started, with people digging up more shit by the day and wanting something to be done about how they were, and are being, wronged by the big media.”

Not once does the word “feminism” appear in these quotes. There are 9 more pages of these quotes:

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/gamergate-you-part-1/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/gamergate-you-part-2/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/gamergate-you-part-3/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/gamergate-you-part-4/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/gamergate-you-part-5/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/gamergate-you-part-6/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/gamergate-you-part-7/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/gamergate-you-part-8/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/gamergate-you-part-9/

https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/gamergate-you-part-10/

Jenni did word cloud analysis on this. While word clouds do not give us intent or linguistic theme, it does tell us frequency of words. In none of the word clouds does “feminism” occupy a larger space than any other word. In one word cloud, the words “women, review, people, gaming” appear relatively equal in size.

As a result, we must conclude that feminism, and as a result anti-feminism, does not figure into GamerGate as much as Schubert estimates. In fact, the top word cloud words include games, gaming, gamer, journalism, want, goal, harassment, movement, review, people, media, standard, exceptional, discussion, and academics are all larger than any feminism term including misogyny, sexism, patriarchy, etc.

#GamerGate, according to those within the tag, is about gaming, gamers, ethics, journalism, reviews, standards, and goals according to Jenni Goodchild’s analysis.

One of the most commonly attacked targets of #gamergate is Anita Sarkeesian

This assertion again has no evidence or cited article from Schubert. In fact, he once again only links to himself. It’s quite puzzling given the ample evidence of Sarkeesian being attacked on the internet. She readily supplies such evidence.

So again turning to Jenni’s work, Anita is never mentioned with significance in any question. However, one question does see her name pop up with Zoe Quinn. That question is, “Are there any things #GamerGate seems to be addressing that you disagree with?”

It bears repeating. The question asks if there are subjects GamerGate SHOULD NOT be addressing. Large words in the word cloud analysis include journalists, movement, games, Zoe, Anita.

So it stands to reason that the topics of Zoe and Anita should, in fact, not be addressed. Games, movement, and journalists appear in clouds where they should be addressed leading to the conclusion the inclusion of these words in this cloud may be a false positive.

In fact, a tag analysis shows that between 9/6 and 10/2, Anita Sarkeesian is mentioned a whopping 3,169 times and 450 links. Feminism got 4,760 mentions. Zoe Quinn is mentioned 6,268 times. Leigh Alexander is mentioned 6,440 times. Alexander is linked 4,967 times. That’s a total of 26,000 mentions.

Gamasutra got 7,820 mentions. Kotaku appears 8,955 times and is linked 9,556 times.

Ethics got 12,143 mentions.

Kotaku, Gamasutra, and Ethics combined (38,500 tweets) get more mentions than Sarkeesian, feminism, Quinn, and Alexander combined (26,000 tweets). This means that Kotaku, Gamasutra, and Ethics are more on the minds of users than any of the listed women.

Christina Sommers, one of Gamergate’s largest self-made celebrities, is virulently anti-feminist.

Once again, Schubert’s source here is his own blog, though he includes a singular tweet where he states that Sommers shows her anti-feminism by stating

“the US the organized women’s movement is doing more harm than good domestically. It’s been taken over by aggrieved eccentrics.”

Now, let’s start with the first problem here with Schubert’s statement. It’s probably the largest question that any individual person has asked concerning feminism and radical critical feminism since the dawn of feminism and radical critical feminism:

What makes feminism inherently good and any counter-argument inherently bad?

There is no answer to this. One attempted answer is that feminism fights for equality. However, the often-cited Wikipedia definition of feminism states that it fights for equality for women. Logically, you cannot fight for equality while fighting for equality for a singular group of people over another group of people.

This contrasts with the LGBT (disclosure, I’m a gay male) movement as they championed equal access to institutions such as marriage, military service, and the right against undue imprisonment. These are policy changes.

Feminism fights for equality for women and women alone. Feminist bell hooks even argues that feminism currently excludes men and must bring men into the fold. This is a recognized failure of feminism that focuses exclusively on women’s issues while claiming status of being “for everyone.”

If you’re a man who potentially loses some access to a right for a woman’s equality, you may see this as bad. This makes feminism as a whole relative. One person’s good is one person’s bad. Many feminists consider the current model of feminism bad including one Christina Hoff Sommers.

So now let’s examine the specific claim now that we’ve established that we cannot demonstrably prove that feminism is inherently good or bad. The claim here is that Sommers is a “Self-made celebrity.” Nowhere in Sommers’s history of work can I see her referring to herself as a celebrity.

She identifies herself as a feminist, a woman, a former philosophy professor, and a writer. She does not identify herself as anti-feminism. However, some have chosen to associate that label with her as her identity. As I have covered before, identity politics means that we allow the person to identify themselves for themselves.

As such, Sommers must be allowed to identify her own beliefs. She states that she is a “first wave” equity feminist who does not ascribe to the ideals of the second and third wave as requiring a deconstruction and elimination of gender roles to liberate women.

It’s vital to know that feminism is not a single point of view. There are three to five waves of feminism (protofeminism, first, second, third, and a proposed fourth) each with a large assortment of sub-schools including sex-positive feminism, equity feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism, and others. Wikipedia cites 20 different kinds of feminism that overlap some or not at all. Anti-feminist is not one.

Sommers continues to state that she is a feminist. While she ascribes to a different variant and school that is less mainstream now, we’ve no reason to doubt her self-identified identity.

Milo Yiannopoulos, their favorite reporter, is also virulently anti-feminist.

This one is one that Schubert sources pretty well. Multiple sources, multiple tweets, and multiple points of view. It took him most of the article to actually do this.

I cannot find any source where Yiannopolous states that he is a feminism. There’s ample evidence that he is not in support of feminism.

However, there is no evidence that Yiannopolous is #GamerGate’s “favorite reporter” over reporters such as Erik Kane, Oliver Campell, or Steve Tom Sawyer just to name a few. As Schubert did not present any evidence to this claim, we have to wonder where he got these data.

Could it be that he has no source and is going on personal opinion?

There’s no evidence that Yiannopolous is the favorite reporter of #GamerGate. Schubert presents no data to justify this claim.

And this really hurts gamergate.

While it’s great to have an opinion and everything, Schubert really needs to learn the difference between opinions and statements of fact. Just because an opinion is stated loudly, harshly, and repeatedly does not make it a fact. There’s no evidence that GamerGate is hurt by any of the above.