PORLA WRIGHT: GamerGate: The Players And The Played.

What makes people angry with Sarkeesian (anger is allowed, abuse is not), is that she is unaccountable. Her videos on sexism and toxic masculinity are used as educational aids in schools, yet they are based on ideology not evidence. Sarkeesian has no academic credentials. She has legitimate critics, I am one of them, but she refuses to engage in open debate and instead directs attention to the abusive minority. That’s cowardly and manipulative. There is no logic that dictates that women are any less corruptible by power than men. To suggest otherwise, in fact, would be sexist.

This is not to excuse threats or suggest that such harassment isn’t traumatic. What reasonable person would not condemn the criminal harassment of women, (or men), in any industry? That is surely moot. What is less moot, is who is actually responsible for these threats.

Sarkeesian is adamant that the culprits are the supporters of #GamerGate. Yet the evidence points to third-party mischief-makers and anonymous trolls being equally vicious to both sides. Journalists are disseminating the radical feminist narrative uncritically, but they themselves are implicated in the scandal, so their impartiality cannot be taken for granted. The involvement of the notorious hacking/trolling group GNAA (who are experts at tricking the media into panic-mode) should also send alarm bells ringing.

Absent further evidence, claims about the identity of the anonymous trolls are pure speculation. There have been no arrests. People on either side of the barricades have been subject to abuse, although coverage has focused mostly on one, photogenic side. In a story about games and players, it’s difficult to discern just who is the player and who is the played.

It’s let a lot of social justice warrior types feel good about themselves, though.

UPDATE: From the comments:

I was just thinking how SJWs behave like malicious little girls and how the tools of social media are perfectly suited to the tactics of mean little girls.

Remember back in grade school when girls learn to join a clique and to ostracize and bully any girls who aren’t in their in-group, anyone who doesn’t flatter them and conform to their selfish standards. And they use backstabbing whispers and make up rumors and anonymous accusations to poison the environment and punish their enemies-de-jour. And girls do this all through grade school to High school.

And it never, never ends. Because the In-Group must have an enemy so they can constantly enforce conformity in the in-group.

This also describes every SJW and most Progressive Liberlals. It’s sort of on target for socialist revolutionaries as well.

Thus was a nation of men turned into a feminist brave new world. Men can’t even retreat into the fantasy world of games without malicious little girls trying to coerce them into conformity. And it will never end because SJWs always need an enemy to punish.

Indeed.