GamerGate, Misogyny, and Why it's Relevant to General DUers

[TygrBright]

35. Causes I believe in have already been labeled "hate speech."

Equal marriage rights, for example.

So long as the sanctioning is outside the legal system, we keep duking it out-- that's what "culture wars" mean. When we have a consensus, that battle is marked "over for now" and we move on to the next one.

It is a very messy, imprecise process.

But I prefer it to legal restriction, and thus when I'm on the taking it side of "You're wrong, you bad person, and you're using hate speech" accusations, I try to NOT respond in kind, but bring the focus back to the issue at hand.

On occasion, I've even gone back to re-examine whether I might indeed be reacting from a position of bias and ignorance. (And to my lasting shame, sometimes I have been.)

There is an ongoing chicken/egg debate about laws and cultural sanction: Does one create the other? Yes, both ways. It's not a unidirectional process, it's a feedback loop.

So I'm hoping very much that you are correct about a growing number of the young male gamers standing up against misogyny, because that's a powerful inertial pull in the right direction.

optimistically,
Bright