I don’t know if you have heard of GamerGate, and I doubt many folks will read this. I’m just an old nerd who loves videogames, and occasionally blogs about it. But this is an issue that has been bothering me for weeks and I feel I need to speak out, even if no one is reading.
GamerGate, in a nutshell, is supposedly about demanding higher standards of journalistic integrity between developers and journalists, but really, that’s just been a ruse, an excuse to harass women geeks. And not just the garden-variety “angry internet trolling in the comment section” harassment, it’s escalated to physical threats, and to the release of personal information via hacking. This resulted in one female critic leaving her home, out of fear for her own safety, and another female journalist leaving the industry all together. It apparently started on the forums of 4chan, due to a spurned ex-boyfriend, but honestly, I don’t care. This whole mess has just been an excuse for geek men to spew misogynist bile, and to generally be hateful, abusive and angry.
To the GamerGaters who still think your cause is noble, even after apparently harassing a charity, I doubt you will listen to me, but I hope at some point you will take a step back and reconsider what you’ve been doing.
To the gaming websites that have covered this topic, but glossed over the harassment to reaffirm your ethics policy, SHAME ON YOU. And to the gaming sites that have remained silent, your silence basically equals consent for geek men to bully and harass geek women, carte blanche.
Geek men, we can do better. And look, I get it. I was and am a geek. I was awkward in high school and college, heck I was a misfit even among the freaks and geeks. I have always been passionate about computer and art. My dating history was spotty as I was figuring myself out. In short I was an angry young man in my early twenties. But eventually, I graduated college, got a job in web design and my anger started to diminish. I had found a place in the world. Eventually I met a girl, and now we have a family. And I made mistakes all along the way, and hopefully learned from a few of them.
Being a geek is hard, even as a white dude, but imagine if you were a girl, then it’s that much harder. What if your geekiness was constantly judged to be false? What if you were constantly discouraged to pursue your interests because they were for “boys”? Or imagine if you were black or gay, it makes it that much harder.
We live in a modern world and it can be tricky to navigate how to be a decent person, let alone a man. Luckily I have found a pretty good website, The Good Man Project that covers dating, being single, being in relationships, parenting, being misunderstood; basically it’s a great resource. The articles seem honest, and they speak to me. I highly recommend checking it out.
And if you are legitimately afraid that the games market is going to change and that they will stop making them just how you like them, well guess what, that’s going to happen. And it won’t be due to women having an opinion about scantily clad dancing girls behind your space marine, it will be due to the new young dudes wanting something else. My favorite “console” was probably the Commodore 64, since I spent the most time with it as an awkward kid. And the last system to really cater to me was the Sega Dreamcast. But that’s OK! The radio doesn’t play the style of music I loved in my early twenties either. The great thing about games is that, in between virtual consoles, emulators and old game consoles, there are hundreds of games in my favorite styles I have yet to play. And even among modern consoles, there are plenty of games I have had a blast with. BioShock Infinite was an incredible experience, and I am currently having a hoot in Destiny.
Finally, the Internet makes it way too easy to be impersonal and rude in the name of being heard. Even if you always strive to be polite, and avoid stirring the pot on Facebook with political posts, we’ve been so conditioned to crave constant feedback and reinforcement, that our minds become over stimulated and end up feeling, in David Roberts’ words, “…wound up like a top…” He had the luxury of taking a year off from the Twitter Rat Race of being constantly connected, and while I doubt many of us could do the same, he learned some things applicable to all of us. My whole family gets way too much screen time, so we’re starting to have a no screen day, one day a week (I am writing this on a notepad). Unplugging—even for one day—is probably healthy for everyone.
Geek men, we can do better. We can have disagreements without bullying and harassing. We can be respectful to everyone, including women, by treating them like people. We can demand better by denouncing bad behavior and by holding our community to task. We can speak out and condemn silence. We can learn to be better males and there are resources out there. And we can make the time to unplug from the web.
OK, I am getting off the soapbox now. The next topic will be either Picross addiction or Space Marines, I promise.
Thanks for reading,
Ben