Another Woman In Gaming Flees Home Following Death Threats

[sufrommich]

149. Yep. More info here:

Gamergate’s patriarchal sway has allowed charlatans like Milo Yiannopoulos to become one of its preeminent champions. Yiannopoulos, who routinely writes misogynistic, transphobic, and other bigoted rants for Breitbart, would never be exalted in any forum lacking an undercurrent of reactionary right-wing sympathies. Even the American Enterprise Institute has chimed in, arguing that the issue of sexism and misogyny in video games is a fake issue created by "feminist tech writers" and "concernocrats." AEI’s involvement has been led by Christina Hoff Summers, who cares very little about video games but an awful lot about the alleged War On Men, which ranks somewhere near the War On Christmas on the list of things adults ought to take seriously. Nevertheless, she’s been anointed by Gamergate fanatics as a truth-teller for her views on male persecution, ditto other reactionaries like YouTube personality "Thunderf00t" who has published videos such as "Do hot girls have all the advantages?" and "Why feminism poisons EVERYTHING."

The conspiracy theory at the core of Gamergate even has parallels to other attacks on liberal journalists. Brietbart wrote how the "secret mailing list of the gaming journalism elite" had been "exposed," the same way Andrew Brietbart tried years ago to nail an allegedly liberal journalism "cabal" including writers like Ezra Klein and Dave Weigel. There was no real scandal with Journolist, the same way there is no real scandal with the game journalist list — unless you believe that journalists merely speaking to one another constitutes some kind of shadowy media illuminati.

Manipulative identity politics, ripped straight from the handbook of conservative sophistry, are also at play. Under the #notyourshield banner, people who say they have vulnerable identities rallied around the Gamergate cause to counter the narrative that all gamers are angry white men (something nobody is saying, by the way) and prove that "gamers" in the movement are suitably diverse. But this hashtag campaign started as just another disingenuous 4chan astroturfing operation designed to make Gamergate critics look like hypocrites, essentially by saying "look at all these women and queer people and black people, they can’t be racist or misogynist!"

Gamergate supporters, like the reactionary right-wing in general, have attempted to co-opt the vulnerability of those they seek to marginalize, while simultaneously maintaining the illusion that they are the ones being harassed. It’s the same tone-deaf logic that bigots and racists use when the structural power enforcing their traditional values erodes, and is eventually conquered: "Stop saying mean things about us because we believe gay marriage should be prohibited by the state! Stop silencing us!"

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/8/6919179/stop-supporting-gamergate