M.Birkhofer color art.

One of my frustrations with the response to Brian Wood’s newsletter is that when I first heard about it, it was through this tweet:

And then what followed was a whole twitter whispering publicly about how awful this newsletter only a select few could see was.  And then finally someone posted it, so I go to it, expecting it to be exactly what the above tweet described.  I’m expecting like a full on Frank Miller rant.  I’m expecting crazy town fireworks.  I have my pitchfork in hand, and I’m ready to burn this mother to the ground.  I mean with Brian Wood, we have someone who we know beyond a shadow of a doubt what he did because he admitted it.  So I was like, oh shit, back off the wagon—here. we. go.  And what I find instead is a fairly reasoned critique of the mob culture of twitter which largely seeks to fan its own flames of outrage to an undefined end, without perspective, largely for its own weekly entertainment.  And then he closed the newsletter by saying that this kind of mob behavior could result in someone killing themselves–which as we have seen in the past IS a possibility of this level of social ostracization, particularly if you are dealing with people who are already struggling with issues.  And that’s true whether you are talking about someone who is a “good” person or a “bad” person.  But so this rather innocuous line turns into Wood is castigating women for speaking out about abusive women.  And this idea that Wood’s newsletter was this thing–this “severe reprimand or rebuke” of women for speaking out against abuse, was perpetuated by more people than just Sneddon.  In fact, it was only because the level of righteousness reached a high enough point, that the newsletter ended up being publicly(bravely) shared. Here’s my issue with that, to people who want to buy into your premise of what this newsletter is, or just want another log on the fire for how they (justifiably) feel about Wood–this is all normal and fine.  But for people outside of that ring, stuff like this makes you question the people who told you the crazy stuff in the first place.  I’m like…wait, can I trust these people’s judgement, if they’re this willing to manipulate these things to fit their mission statement premise? I saw this as well with the Nathan Edmondson “reporting” earlier this week.   Reporting that talks about “two-year investigations” and has as its premise Edmondson as a “predator”.  But here’s the thing, how he is a predator is never defined.  It’s just said over and over that he is.  The only actual information that we have been publicly given this week on Edmondson is that he once worked for a conservative think tank, and that he was arrested as a 19 year old for credit card fraud.  Here is the problem with THAT.  Again, this is all fine and great for people who already agree with your premise that Edmondson is a creep–or who are just willing to believe without any kind of evidence that he is some kind of predator.  But when the only real thing that you point to is his political leanings, then what you have done is take very serious issues of harassment, ethics, and bigotry–and strained it through the bi-polar political prism of the culture.  So now, what it looks like, to people who have no other information, is that Edmondson is being attacked because he has unpopular(within comics) political beliefs.  Which Wood in his Newsletter mentions. And that’s so destructive.  That choice really harms anyone that actually did want to come forward about Edmondson because now anything people say about him, people can just say it’s because he’s a republican. And the reason that Nick and others did it, is because they equate differing political ideas as personal failings–which makes sense in your own fish bubble.  Like other people who share your beliefs will follow you down that rabbit hole.  But people outside of that, don’t operate along those lines.  I know plenty of people who aren’t “predators” but who hold repugnant political or religious views. And this gets at my issue, and why I wrote this.  It is incredibly frustrating to me, as someone who has heard the horrible stories about both of these men, publicly, and privately, to see the reporting on both be so sloppy, so fucking hacky, that it undermines the entire idea that these guys have done anything wrong.  And it’s because the people who are pushing this stuff publicly, exist within an online echo chamber where it’s “we gotta push this out the door NOW, because it’s so important!”–but when it’s this sloppy, all it is to me is web clicks.  This is trafficking in the popularity of the “outrage of the week” culture in comics that props up at least 75 percent of the talk about comics online(god forbid we all ever talk about an actual comic).  To me, if you really cared about these issues, you would bother to have the professionalism to do the job right.  The phrase “you come at the king, you best not miss” is so so important on these issues.  By not dotting your i’s, or crossing your t’s–all you’ve done is sew seeds of doubt.  It is irresponsible. And what drives me crazy is that in a week it will all be forgotten as we go onto the next thing.  You know why there have been no repercussions for Wood’s admitted sexual harassment?  Because people in power don’t take you seriously.  And why should they?  And I mean all of these things are given the same weight.  There’s no difference in what happens with these thinkpieces and outrage no matter what happens, the outrage is the same volume.  People launched just as many ships over Milo Manara drawing Spider-woman’s butt as they did Brian Wood’s sexual harassment.  Same people.  Same ships.  And you weirdos don’t even know what you want.  So we have Brian Wood admit what he did.  Now what?  Should he be banned from comics?  For life?  Should he be fined?  Just publicly shamed??  For how long?  When Chris Sims stuff came out, what we heard from ComicsAlliance is that “people change”–which I agree with!  They do!  Reform is possible.  But how do we as complete strangers measure change?  How do we as pitchforked mob forgive?  Can we forgive?  What does forgiveness mean in that context?  Is forgiveness ours to give?  Do we want a world where one public misstep and its forever?  Or do we want to have discussions about when people fuck up and everyone can kind of try and grow from the situation?  Because right now, it just reads like sludge circling the drain.  We can do better.  We SHOULD do better.

The other day I made my first (and, hopefully, last) Twitter posts. The person they were directed at, of course, did not respond and promptly blocked my account. I’ll leave his name up there uncensored, in hopes he may get pressured to reply.

This is, of course, B.S., along with most of the rest of what he says.

You could take this as a villainous declaration that he is trying to slowly take everything away from Zoe before finally taking her own sanity. Alternatively, though, you could take it as him genuinely believing that she is a danger to herself and others and would benefit from treatment - something much more in line with the rest of his claims. In a way, the whole Hateful Boyfriend article reminds me of this amazing Key & Peele sketch emphasizing how much communication is lost via text. Her interpretations of his words are very negative, but they are also not the only ones possible.

I don’t want to say the author’s interpretation of Gjoni is wrong, since language can be interpreted many ways and I am no more informed than she is, nor do I want to play Gjoni up as being some paragon of morality who can do no wrong, since regardless of what I say he is still a lanky hipster social justice warrior with positive feelings about San Francisco. However, below the cut I would like to look at the evidence the author brings up in her article and analyze it under the assumption that Eron is telling the truth. In particular, I want to hold it up against three claims of his:

His primary goal is to warn people about Zoe Quinn so that they cannot be harmed by her.

He does not hate Zoe or want her to come to harm.

His interactions with 4chan were primarily geared toward reducing the harassment Zoe would receive. 

Had a nice day in the park. Maggie made me a flower crown. Saw a butterfly.

When I was a lot younger, journalism used to be something magical. As a creator, it was the holy grail we all gambled for: a chance to have your work mentioned in front of thousands of people who had never seen it, pushing you a little further away from being a nobody. I won it on more than one occasion; if you start seriously stalking me, you can find articles with photos of a younger me holding drawings and standing proudly in front of politicians and whatnot. A glowing news article written about you was the sort of thing you saved in a scrapbook.

As I got older, though, my views gradually changed. I began to see more things in journalism that I knew, from my own experiences, were not true. I met more and more people who had been on the receiving end of journalistic libel and suffered because of it. I slowly discovered that the journalists I had once looked up to as giftgivers had equal ability - and often willingness - to bestow harm. As my reach grew and I learned to advertise for myself, it slowly reached the point that journalists seemed like nothing but a hazard.

I’ve written a lot of posts about GamerGate and gaming journalism, but I realize I haven’t written much on where I’m personally coming from on the topic. I am not a person who harbors any particularly dark secrets or horrible wrongdoings. I make most my thoughts and actions public (even the unimaginably stupid ones), and my shadiest business dealing was probably this time I paid a friend to recognize and point me out in a crowd, which you could argue was technically astroturfing. Despite this, journalism has come to scare me because I’ve realized the truth doesn’t matter. Back when I was more actively writing essays about GamerGate, I had multiple people label me a “conservative who is afraid of seeing change in games”, as well as had actual employed game journalists spread fabricated stories about my sexual orientation. And this was just for writing my thoughts on my personal blog - other people, ones who criticized journalism more loudly or consistently than I did, had worse things said about them, which I am unable to confirm or deny other than knowing what I faced was nothing but lies. From my perspective, it was a clear message being sent from the journalists being criticized: “be quiet, keep your head down, appreciate our gifts, and we won’t hurt you”. 

I think journalists should be feared, but it should be because they can find the truth, not because they can tell lies. Sure, I know that I could play into their hand, play the role of the well-behaved and quiet game dev in hopes that journalists will give me positive press and won’t deem me a threat, but I’d rather stand up for the idea of getting these people disarmed. It is in my interest to faciliate a world where people who abuse their position lose their position, and where no single person or organization has the power to shape or hinder another person’s career or reputation. That’s probably part of the reason I sympathized with GamerGate from its early conception.

I guess I’m partly writing this in response to a recent opinion piece by Ben Kuchera. It was the pretty standard fare - another article telling me to my face that, because I show support to GamerGate, I’m a scared FPS fan who is afraid of political commentary on games - but reading it made me realize: I am afraid. Not of political commentary, but of the fact that a journalist can say things like this about me and I’m not yet powerful enough to counter it. Positive press is something I have no problem attaining on my own - I can just find a small niche audience and build a connection with them - but what happens when a writer much bigger than me decides to slander me? what response am I supposed to give when I feel unfairly represented or even discriminated against?

This is what so many of the journalists speaking out against GamerGate seem to not understand. In my time associating with GamerGate I don’t think I’ve met a single person who is afraid of progressive criticism or thematic analysis of games. Rather, they’re afraid of centralized criticism. They’re afraid that a privileged and removed 1% of the population will control 99% of the opinions delivered to others, and that there will be no way for smaller voices to speak out against them even if they are being harmed. Their fear is that a single, nonrepresentative group will shape the narrative others hear, and that there will be no way to counter it.

And every once in a while I’ll see this assertion that if GamerGate really wants to have an impact on ethics and fair representation in the media, they need to disband their movement and reform it in the future so it can have a better reputation. I think I speak for a lot of GamerGate, though, when I say that I’m not confident that reforming would make any difference. The bulk of opposition GamerGate faces isn’t from people who have been directly wronged by GamerGate, but from people who have heard negative stories about it - the thing journalism specializes in. There is no sign to me that anything will change if GamerGate breaks up and reforms, because let’s not downplay it: they are aiming to make a lot of dishonest journalists lose their jobs or power, and these are the same people who can slander accusers if they so choose. When you have people like me finally standing up to a media that has long been problematic, and then that same media accuses us of trying to maintain the status quo and suppress criticism, you realize that a bad reputation is probably just a consequence to standing up to journalists.

Maybe I’m wrong about this. But that’s the thing: if I’m wrong, the journalists aren’t showing me that. My personal experience is that the harder I criticize them, the more libel, bigotry and harassment I face from them or their friends. Like, this isn’t even anonymous, it literally happens in public and gets ignored, or at most painted as something that was “deserved” for showing support to GamerGate. Similarly, the reaction journalists have shown toward things like Eron Gjoni’s “Zoe Post” is terrifying to me; numerous articles say that it accuses Zoe Quinn for having sex in exchange for reviews, despite the fact that you can actually read it and falsify this. 

I don’t think the gaming journalists and news outlets GamerGate is attacking understand what it’s like to know that someone could, say, link this on the front page of Kotaku with the headline “Kazerad writes long essay denying the holocaust” and thousands of people would believe the headline without question. And that’s just a tame example: imagine working on a game for years and knowing that it could all be for naught if just one journalist decides they don’t like you and says something untrue. Or, a little closer to home, imagine being a critic trying to write about gender and sexuality, knowing that it won’t get a bit of press coverage unless it victimizes its subjects and champions benevolent sexism.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying GamerGate consists entirely of understanding and well-meaning angels. Like any large group, I can’t and won’t deny that there are a lot of people in the group who I disagree with on various matters. But look at it from my perspective: why would that disagreement actually matter to me? The GamerGate people can infight over feminism or politics or net neutrality all they want, but that doesn’t stop them from working together toward a common goal: dismantling a problematic institution.

In a way, this mindset might be foreign to some people since it’s a rare instance where there’s no incentive to actually improve the institution in question, just to destroy it. With something like the ongoing protests in Ferguson Missouri, the political alignment of your allies is very important since you can’t just abolish the police force - you have to push it in some direction. With gaming journalism, though, imagine if all the major gaming journalism sites just disappeared overnight: game criticism and social critique would fall back to the much more diverse and specialized crowd on Tumblr, Youtube, and similar sites. If people want review aggregators, several new ones have been developing in the wake of GamerGate in an attempt to make the model less abusable. And heck, if a consumer-driven revolt like GamerGate was actually responsible for the major sites disappearing, it would stand as a threatening possibility looming over any future journalists who start to go down that path. It’s not like feminist criticism and stuff would disappear if GamerGate wins; it’d just move over to this website, which is predominantly female, predominantly nonamerican, and has more trans people than a trans pride parade. You know, groups who might actually be able to talk about feminism without it carrying all the finesse and nuance of an artist who draws My Little Pony fanart “because it’s popular right now”. 

In fact, that’s one of the other things that bothers me a lot about the journalist behavior I’ve seen throughout this: their attitude toward diversity. As a creator, diversity is something I’m comfortable with. I understand that people are going to have a lot of different, equally valid opinions about my work, and even the negative opinions tend to be fairly diverse. Some people will dislike my stuff because of the themes I include, other people will dislike me because I do a lot of fanfiction rather than creating original settings, and some people will just have a problem with the fact I’m physically incapable of expressing an idea in less than eight paragraphs. I understand that I have to address these individually, smooth over any offensive areas if I can do so without causing harm to someone else, and as an absolute last resort respectfully admit that my content is not intended for a particular audience (I’m sorry, eight paragraphs guy, it would’ve never worked between us). With the journalists, though, they see a bunch of criticism coming from GamerGate and immediately fall into calling it an “angry mob”, or telling them to come up with some simple, coherent list of demands if they want to see changes. When they can’t all agree on what they want, it’s taken as proof that they have nothing good to say.

And it’s like… these journalists literally can’t comprehend the concept of diversity. The idea of appealing to a group that wants many different things is just completely foreign to them. If one person is upset about something and nobody else is, that person is wrong; this can be evidenced by them disagreeing with someone who is right. It feels like they are pushing this twisted take on acceptance where minority voices don’t matter, and then they simultaneously have the gall to act as though them controlling the conversation is all that keeps minorities from being erased.

I don’t like to bring my own sexuality up much, but if you’re a journalist reading this, let me tell you about minority representation: we don’t need people to speak for us. We need people to not speak over us. We can compete on our own and make ourselves heard as long as there is not a structure or institution actively controlling the conversation and deciding who gets heard. Your insistence on writing these “progressive critiques” and attacking anyone who disagrees with you as being conservative misogynists who are against change isn’t helping us; it’s just another example of what we’re fighting against. You might think that your belief is the right one and therefore you are helping everyone out by silencing others, but that’s what normal people refer to as being a bigot. 

I guess that takes me back to my main point: me and GamerGate. I’m pretty used to being told that I am only showing it support because I have been manipulated or deceived, or that I shouldn’t be upset about game journalism since there are bigger problems (you know, bigger than the industry for which I am a consumer, critic, and supplier). Hopefully by now, though, you can kind of see what rationale I would have for supporting a movement that attacks journalism, and understand that I am content to support a group that is morally gray if it means causing damage to a group I perceive as morally devoid. If you are a journalist you might be thinking “so how do I destroy this GamerGate thing?”, and while I can’t speak for everyone who advocates it, I can give you my own criteria under which I would stop supporting it:

You have to do something that isn’t evil.

Like, I’m not asking a lot here. Maybe rather than insisting all your critics are horrible bigots who are afraid of change, you could give a nod to those of us who critique you because we are trying to actively fight against bigoted behavior? It’s okay to have people who dislike your material, but less okay to misrepresent and slander these people. It’s even worse when this involves erasing the identity of minorities. 

Maybe rather than accusing other people of anonymous harassment, you could address some of the non-anonymous harassment coming from your own employees and co-workers? If you guys were as critical of other journalists as GamerGate is of controversial allies like KingOfPol who spread information without confirming it first, your actions would seem much less like collusion.

Maybe rather than exclusively talking about how the gaming industry is so hostile and scary to women, you could draw attention to cool female devs like Georgina Bensley who go completely ignored in the media? Her work is critically acclaimed, yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen her referred to by something other than her company name.

Maybe when a developer faces sexual harassment from someone you’re friends with, at least investigate it a little before attacking them as making a false accusation? I admit I’m still pretty unnerved by how the whole thing with Wolf Wozniak was handled, since from my perspective it looked like he was publicly shamed into silence and had a bunch of industry connections revoked for coming forward about sexual harassment from a big name. Personally, that’s the kind of thing that makes the field scary to me, not anonymous trolls from 4chan. 

What I’m saying is that it doesn’t really matter what you do; just find some way to bring the slightest bit of moral ambiguity to this from my perspective. Show me and the people like me that you bring something of value to the industry, not only harm, and that I’m wrong to fear you and crave your removal. All your response to GamerGate seems to rely on painting them in a bad light, and you don’t understand that this doesn’t sway sympathizers to your side when you have no redeeming qualities yourself. You see GamerGate respond to this negative light by doing stuff like donating tens of thousands of dollars to charity, and rather than even trying to outcompete them at that you accuse them of trying to weaponize charity for positive publicity. And it’s like, fucking hell, positive publicity is the exact thing you need! The whole reason GamerGate exists is because a lot of people agreed that you are terrible in every way, and your response is to belittle your opponents for trying to be better than you.

Just… I’m imploring you, if you want to sway me and other “moderate” people away from GamerGate then do something we will want to support. Display a positive quality. Prove that you’re not just a bunch of bigots intent on getting paid to be internet bullies. Because from my perspective, and my interactions with you, you are are only causing harm to the industry and inhibiting social progress. And worst of all, you seem to have no desire to convince me otherwise. 

What I’m writing here probably won’t matter. I’m just one person, and I can be ignored if my feelings and experiences don’t fit the story the people with a voice want to tell. They can just say I agree with them, or that they are making the field more diverse and friendly, and nobody will question it. The best I can hope is that my words will spread far enough that people will hear me when I say:

So.  I said I’d do this and here it is.  I have a theory and I wanted to share it. Seemed topical given the online battle going on over video games.

What is up with female representation in video games?  Is it sexism?  Misogyny?  Ignorant?  Well, I have an idea and let me share it with you.  As usual, please, indulge me and read to the end.  It is along read so I hope you all are buckled in.

What is my theory?  That the problems with representation isn’t to do with the negative outlook on women from society.  It comes from the inherent positive view of women society has.  That is to say, the view that women are inherently nice and pure, that we shield women from harm, that society cares much more about the plight of women than it does men.

I’m sure I’ve already lost a lot of you.  But please, read beyond the break.  Give me a fair shake.  I’m a woman and I’ve been a gamer for a long time, probably close to a decade and a half.  I’ve seen these issues evolve and I’ve experienced a lot of this behavior in real life.  So, I’ll say again.

Give me a fair shake.

2 - video games don’t necessarily cause all gamers to become misogynist. however, misogyny is something that can be coded and it’s coded into some types of video games when it comes to their narratives, female character representation, etc.

They already tried the whole “video games cause X” bullshit back in the early 90’s.  And you know what?  They came to the conclusion, through numerous studies, that the only effect gaming has on anyone is to make them irate if the game they’re playing is difficult.  That means someone playing a cutesy Japanese puzzle game is probably more likely to throw their controller at the screen than someone playing a mindless shoot-em-up game that requires very little thought.

Anita Sarkeesian has shown herself to be an untrustworthy individual that actually doesn’t even like video games, nor even plays the ones she claims to.

She supported #CancelColbert, but apparently didn’t hate him enough to not accept publicity from him.  Hypocritical much?

Help yourself to all the linked information in this post, which brings considerable doubt to the notion that video games cause anything more than kids that don’t play outside enough.

After my last zillion essays about GamerGate stuff, I want to move back into talking about game design proper. A good segue, I think, is to talk a little bit about “art games” - in particular, this recurring accusation that something is “not actually a game”.

Demon’s Mirror-page 258!