On #GamerGate and Bad People.

My name is Jordan. I am a twenty year old white, female computer scientist and equality activist who now identifies as a feminist. I have won various awards for my work increasing awareness about the unique struggles women and minorities face within the STEM fields. In high school, I as awarded the National Center for Women & Information Technology’s (NCWIT) Aspirations in Computing award for my region, and I was national runner-up twice. I’ve taught multiple computing camps as a part of NCWIT’s AspireIT program for middle school girls to become more interested in computers. I have also worked with my university’s African and African American studies department to offer and teach Lego Engineering camps to local Black youths from some of the most underfunded and neglected schools in the county. I am a proud FIRST robotics alumnus where I was the first female programming captain the team ever had. That year was the only year the programming was done before the mechanical build was, and I had so much time left over I built the team a brand new website as well. I now help run the various robotics tournaments at my school as well as mentor robotics teams and get more parents to become “robotics” parents rather than “soccer” moms. Just last year, I was a SHE++ Campus Ambassador for my school — a distinction shared only by 10 women across the world — where I worked to solve problems specific to my university’s computer science program to make it more accessible for atypical computer science students. More recently, I have been invited to VMWare’s fearless leader student summit to talk about my experiences, successes, and failures solving diversity problems in the field. I am currently working on developing educational software and tools to help supplement the lack-luster education that students with learning disabilities and students at underfunded schools receive in our classrooms. If this doesn’t tell you the kind of person I am, I can give you more proof to show you that I bust my butt trying to make positive changes.

I am absolutely, 100% in favor for increasing diversity in the tech fields. I am also a staunch supporter #GamerGate. No, those things aren’t mutually exclusive. If you think they are, I’d love to invite you to a conversation about it; I’ll put the kettle on.

If you don’t think that, you probably already identify as a pro-GamerGate individual. There’s still merit for you to read this, so stick around.

So #GamerGate.

Well, this certainly makes me look bad doesn’t it? To any casual observer attempting to research what the hell people are screaming about on the internet, #GamerGate certainly looks to be a group of horrible people. To the uninitiated, #GamerGate is a radical anti-feminist movement dedicated to driving any and all women out of both gaming and the technical fields. I’m not surprised outside observers see us as the bad guys, especially because many notable news conglomerates latched onto the harassment narrative as well.

But I think it’s only fair to tell you that the administrators over at Wikipedia that handle the article, most notably Ryulong, routinely read and post on active anti-GamerGate platforms and have personal connections to notable anti-GamerGate individuals. Yes, even your beloved Wikipedia can be biased.

But that in itself does not prove that the #GamerGate movement is not what the article claims to be. As the GamerGate wiki describes it:

Now we have two totally different definitions for the same thing, with this definition being from a pro-GamerGate biased source as opposed to anti. Notice it mentions nothing about “targeted harassment”.

NOTE: This is not an article detailing the history of #GamerGate or defining exactly what it is.

I am not going to describe the history of the movement to you, that has been done in excruciating detail to an obsessive degree by various sources, though I invite you to read from both sides of the matter if you are truly in the dark.

To see the anti-Gamergate perspective, please read the official, though biased, wikipedia article. If you are a redditor, I invite you to visit the r/Gamerghazi sub and strike up a conversation. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to talk about their views opposing the movement. Also read articles by Polygon, Kotaku, and other members of the GameJournoPros cabal who are all stauncly anti-Gamergate.

To see the pro-Gamergate perspective, read through the Gamergate wiki. Redditors can pop into r/KotakuInAction and do as I suggested for the anti-view. For news articles, Breitbart and TechRaptor are suitable sources. Though written by pro-Gamergate, the People’s History of Gamergate is an impressively unbiased account of this mess.

On to what I have to say.

To say that GG is an anti-woman, misogynistic movement is not only wrong, but a mark of ignorance. I have been more than welcomed not just as a woman, but as another human being ready to take a stand against unfair practices in an industry that should be a meritocracy, but is in reality an oligarchy that thrives off cronyism and nepotism. I appreciated that #NotYourShield — a hashtag comprised of erased minorities tired of being used as excuses to justify these practices — was putting their foot down against liars like Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu, and Zoe Quinn. I was among the first wave of #NotYourShield tweeters, and still regularly check in. For the first time, I was able to steal my own voice back from these women who like to pretend that they speak for all women in tech, when they have as much legitimacy as Femen does to Feminism. To say that these women are supposed to represent me is beyond insulting, and I think they’ve done a horrifying amount of damage to the progress women have fought for over the past ten years in the field.

But, “if GG isn’t sexist, what have they done to prove otherwise?”. For me personally, The Fine Young Capitalists and Mercedes Carerra helped me in ways I can never repay them. I received the Diversity in Tech scholarship raised by Carerra, Rappard, and hundreds of GamerGaters to help me pay for college: about $5,400 after CAD to USD conversions. You can read my essay here. And that’s just me they helped, we haven’t even talked about the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for various charities:

  • The Fine Young Capitalists (for Afterlife Empire): $23,000 (a game jam meant to help and raise awareness for female game developers. Afterlife Empire is the final product, check it out on Steam.)
  • Helping a sexually assaulted porn actress get back on her feet and recover: $11,000 (relevant as anti-GamerGate harassed her and mocked the incident because of her chosen profession).
  • Honey Badger Brigade: $30,000 in legal fees after being forcefully ejected from a convention by anti-GamerGate because of their “sexist” affiliation, despite being a woman.
  • Legal fees for Eron Gjoni to fight the gag order placed upon him: $15,000.
  • American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: $5,550
  • PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center: $16,732
  • Action Against Hunger USA: $2,095
  • UNICEF: $1,511
  • Extra Life: $6,662
  • Toys for Tots: $7,369
  • World Wildlife Fund for Sea Lions: $5,525
  • Stairlift for a disabled woman: $5,000
  • #LoveData charity for HLH Research support: $1,100
  • (EDIT! Including one I forgot) Raising money for nationally humiliated Rosetta project scientist, Matt Taylor, over a funny shirt. The donations went to a STEM-related charity known as UNAWE to teach children on space science: $24,003

And many, many, many more. These are all aggregated and well sourced at the Gamergate Wiki.

So for being a sexist, hateful movement, there certainly is a lot of giving — especially to women and feminist initiatives — going on. But this doesn’t prove that #GamerGate is a “good” movement. Proving that more good has come about from bad is another article waiting to be written all on its own, and I am not here to do that.

I’m here to talk about people. Bad people.

Bad people are everywhere. They’re in good movements just as much as they’re in bad movements. Bad people can be friends, they can be family. They’re on the streets just as much as they’re in prisons. Most importantly, bad people ruin things for good people.

#GamerGate is associated with the harassment, doxxing, and death threats of women in gaming and tech. GamerGaters are quick to point out that this association is because that’s how the mainstream news paints us, and most people don’t take the initiative to do additional research beyond checking the biased wiki article. Meanwhile, the GamerGate counter-movement is painted as a poor group of badgered victims who have suffered things no person should be subjected to.

These horrible things — harassing, doxxing, and death threats — are things that the #GamerGate community does not condone. When women like Sarkeesian and Wu were being harassed by countless anonymous accounts, #GamerGate was the one that took the time to find these third party harassers and report them to the authorities. The most notorious of which was Mateus Sousa, who was discovered and reported to Brazilian police as death threats are illegal in Brazil. An act that the anti-GamerGate side, and even Sarkessian, refuse to acknowledge. Even looking at the top rules for the main subreddit — 1) Don’t be a dick, 2) No Doxxing, 3) No Posting in Bad Faith, 5) No brigading — condemning these actions and holding those who do them accountable is built into the core of the community, yet #GamerGate is still associated with these heinous acts.

What you won’t see, is that those who stand against the #GamerGate movement, are just as guilty (if not even more so) of these actions as we supposedly are:

  • Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart journalist who exposed the GameJournoPros ring and provides commentary on events surrounding GamerGate, was sent a loaded syringe and a dead animal in the mail.
  • Boogie2988, a popular youtube celebrity who made some comments on the GamerGate affair (is not actually actively pro-GG), was doxxed and had his family threatened.
  • Mike Cernovich, a pro-GamerGate lawyer, was SWATTED for his opinions.
  • A friendly #GamerGate public meetup with Milo and pro-GG feminist author and professor Christina Hoff Sommers had a false 911 report called upon it, and the owner of the venue was harassed by phone calls of people trying to cancel and slander the meeting. #GamerGate meetups now hide venue locations to keep people safe from anti-GamerGate harassers. (EDIT! I have been made aware that this was actually a bomb-threat. More serious than I previously believed.)
  • Randi Harper, an anti-GamerGate activist doxxed hundreds of GamerGater’s facebook accounts. She is often claimed to be a “victim” of GamerGate, though she routinely harasses and victimizes those she disagrees with. Also harassed and attacked renowned author Anne Rice.
  • Adam Sessler, an anti-GamerGate former G4 television celebrity, openly advocated for doxxing individuals.
  • Leigh Alexander, former Gamasutra writer, currently Offworld editor in chief, and an extreme anti-GamerGate activist, has endorsed doxxing, actually doxxed people, threatened to end young developer’s careers, and joined Harper’s attack on Anne Rice.
  • LizzyF, a young woman who writes for The Escapist and also pro-GamerGate supporter, was doxxed and hacked by anti-GamerGate activists. They did this to a woman in the industry, the very demographic they are supposedly fighting for.

If #GamerGate is the movement associated with harassing, doxxing, and threats, then why is it that anti-GamerGate gets a pass for doing these exact same things? Is it because there are “no bad tactics, just bad targets”? Is it because we are supposedly “evil”, and our opponents fight on the side of “good”? To only pit the blame on #GamerGate for these things because of a few bad people within the movement, while ignoring the same crimes perpetrated by the counter-movement is hypocritical and willfully ignorant. Both sides have terrible people, something that both anti’s and pro’s should admit, recognize, and fight against. But as I talked about previously, Gamergate is actually doing something about the “bad apples” within its ranks, and takes a strong stance against these damaging tactics. Meanwhile over in anti-Gamergate you have even their leaders not just endorsing these tactics, but actively engaging in them.

In comic book terms, GamerGate is the Batman of this cultural war, as cliche as that is. He’s an excellent detective, a philanthropist, abstains from excessive harm against his opponents, fights for the common people, and attempts to bring justice to those who have done wrong. However he’s kind of weird, a little obsessive, broody, has bad PR, struggles with his demons, and is sometimes a little self-important. Anti-Gamergate is more like Punisher: willing to use any tactic to achieve a goal regardless of who he hurts, crazy obsessive and vengeance driven…but thinks he’s on a quest for justice and that his actions are justified because his targets are “bad people”.

But we need to go back to “bad apples”.

#Gamergate is an open hashtag. There are no requirements for joining or posting, and that comes with the risk that people will post in bad faith using it. With the most recent #BlackLivesMatter stunt pulled at the Bernie Sanders speech, it’s incredibly easy to see how a few loud, vocal people can — in bad faith — discredit the legitimacy of an entire movement. Feminism routinely gets a bad rap from groups like Femen, the few women who unironically believe that all men are inherently evil and should be killed, and entitled women who believe that too cold air conditioning is oppressive, yet people readily point out that these are radical extremists who don’t represent the whole of the movement. Then, why can’t the same be done for #Gamergate? The few individuals and splinter groups that do actually doxx and harass women and minorities don’t represent the whole of #Gamergate just as female supremacists don’t represent the whole of Feminism. The organized feminist movement condemns the actions of these women, and so too does the organized #Gamergate movement condemn the actions of harassers and doxxers.

These harassers and doxxers do not represent me as a Gamergater, and these crazy radical feminists who attack preachers in broad daylight and believe in “manspreading” do not represent me as a Feminist. I think it’s also important to add that even though I am a Feminist, I consider myself just as much an advocate for Male Rights despite the “red pillers” that give it a bad name. Call me a Feminist, call me a Men’s Rights Activist, an Egalitarian or a Humanitarian. Call me a GamerGater, but do so with the respect you would give another human being. This is a lesson that needs to be learned on both sides of the argument, and I think a little empathy goes a long way.

That’s what I had to say. I know I am just another voice in the sea of thousands, but I hope I made at least some of you question some preconceived notions about this whole nasty media mess.

Oh, and before any of you try to say I have “internalized misogyny” or some stupid buzzword like that, insinuating that I, an educated and accomplished young woman who did her research, is incapable of making an informed opinion is pretty damningly sexist. Thank you.