Central Question: How do we engage with reactionary movements? (Warning: this discusses the Tea Party and #GamerGate—both are noxious, but the latter ought to come with a trigger warning because #GamerGate.)
On the 17th of December in 1773, George Hewes smeared coal dust on his face, dressed up as an Indian, and threw tea into Boston Harbor. “I have never gotten over,” writes Garret Keizer in Harper’s, “the notion that the history of the United States begins with an act of masquerade.” I haven’t, either: men dressed as Mohawks, wielding hatchets, shouting huzzahs and storming ships.
The earnestness — the almost-innocence — of that scene is mirrored in those today who call themselves Tea Partiers, who don tricorn hats and drape them with tea bags. If you can put aside the reactionary politics, there’s something almost sweet about them in their blessed naïvety.
And in our post-post-everything moment, we laugh — which is probably a good thing. When discourse breaks (and make no mistake, it’s broken), there’s little left but to troll. I love the flippancy of the word troll: monosyllabic and compact. Sometimes we don’t feed them. Sometimes we make acrostics out of BENGHAZI and @ mention prominent conservatives.
But I have to remind myself that the Internet is a dangerous place.
When Anita Sarkeesian was driven out of her home, I didn’t call them trolls; when men threaten rape, they are not trolls. The word is too diminutive, and we ought not be flippant about what happened to Sarkeesian. We ought not be flippant about what happens to women when they wander down the back alleys of the Internet.
Let me back up.
Depending on whom you ask, Sarkeesian is either a semi-famous cultural critic or semi-notorious Social Justice Warrior. She made her mark with “Tropes vs. Women,” a series of well-produced YouTube videos created by her Feminist Frequency channel. Sean Collins at Rolling Stone describes her work as “point[ing] out that roles [in video games] most often available to women — from princesses to be rescued to prostitutes to be murdered — are both sexist and unimaginative. If these roles were rethought, diversified, and expanded, Sarkeesian argues, gaming’s creative class and audience would be diversified and expanded in turn, and games would become more fun to boot.” Perhaps I’m hanging around with the wrong crowd, but it doesn’t seem a particularly radical argument.
Obviously, I’m mistaken.
On August 27, 2014, the gaming site Polygon reported that the threats against Sarkeesian had escalated to the point where she felt she needed to leave her home. “Some very scary threats have just been made against me and my family,” she wrote on Twitter. “Contacting authorities now.”
“[P]ics or screenshots please,” one Twitter user replies. “I’m an [sic] skeptical person.”
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This was neither the first nor the last time Sarkeesian would face blood-curdling threats, and I have little desire to catalog her nauseating harassment here. But that August incident is notable for its timing; it lines up with the Internet rorschach test called #GamerGate.
An ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, posted a near–10,000 word screed detailing the alleged flaws and foibles of an indie game developer named Zoe Quinn, which I’m not going to link to because it’s intensely personal, mostly vindictive, and life is too short. For the proponents of #GamerGate, though, it was the shot heard ’round the Internet, sparking a noble revolution against a corrupt gaming press that holds its audience in contempt. And so, from the murky depths of the “Zoe Post,” a spectral shape emerged — The Quinnspiracy: Quinn lied about rape and death threats to build her reputation, slept with at least one video game reviewer to get positive reviews for her game (or, as #GamerGaters might say, her non-game) Depression Quest, and conspired with a veritable who’s-who of the gaming press and Internet commentariat to cover the whole thing up. (If you have a half-hour to burn, and don’t mind a venti dose of casual misogyny, I’d recommend watching The Internet Aristocrat’s video on the subject; it’s pretty much the seething id of #GamerGate.)
There’s more to this story, though — or maybe what I mean is that there’s very little to this story. The center of the thing, that Quinn slept her way to good reviews, does not hold. Gjoni has “clarified” his post: he now alleges that Quinn slept with Nathan Grayson — a writer at the gaming site Kotaku — after he reviewed her game. This didn’t stop the parade of speculating and slut-shaming. If Zoe Quinn slept with Grayson to get good reviews, who else did she fuck? I bet Anita Sarkeesian is doing it, too. And on and on. Quinn, Sarkeesian, and many, many more were subjected to the worst kind of invective imaginable. Many were doxed (had personal information posted against their will). More were threatened. (I should note here that proponents of #GamerGate tend to either flatly disbelieve that these threats occur or no-true-Scotsman away the harassers as “not real” #GamerGaters.)
Since you can only get so much juice out of Zoe Quinn’s private life, #GamerGaters have moved on to this: #GamerGate is about corruption in journalism. Gaming journalism is not, they allege, objective. Social Justice Warriors (SJWs — a phrase flung as an epithet at feminists) have, by hook or by crook, wormed their way into its very heart. And, so, when people like Anita Sarkeesian point out that games can have truly awful representations of gender, race, and sexuality, some gamers feel as though they are being told what to like — what to think. When gaming sites run thinkpieces about the end of the gamer identity, some gamers feel attacked and belittled. When message boards scrub posts about Zoe Quinn’s personal life, some gamers see SJWs censoring them — wielding political correctness like a hatchet.
Objective isn’t a word to be trusted. In this case, objective is at least as much about removing any trace of feminist thought from games, gaming, or game criticism as it is about any improprieties supposedly committed by Quinn. Like any reactionary movement worth its salt, #GamerGate seeks to go back. In this case, it’s to a status quo in which the values represented in video games are tacit, in which the mores are unspoken. A common refrain throughout writings of the #GamerGaters is that art may reflect society, but society does not reflect art. They’ve knocked it down so many times, this strawman is starting to look a little careworn: If you play Grand Theft Auto, then you’re definitely going to kill prostitutes in real life, too. The argument, though, that I’d make goes something like: If you uncritically imbibe and spew misogyny, you’re helping to reinforce a harmful system.
There’s a limit though to how far I want to wade into the murky waters of #GamerGate, which isn’t to say that I don’t think there is something to be gained by diving in. The aim of this piece, though, isn’t to grapple with the #GamerGate’s hydra-headed swamp beast — it’s broader than that; I wonder at the ways in which we engage with reactionary movements at all.
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Sometimes, we need to troll. There comes a point when your own earnestness costs too much, or their earnestness is too ripe, and then the only thing left to do is #KillAllMen. “I’m still grateful to have ironic misandry in my arsenal of tools for dealing with being a woman in the world,” writes Amanda Hess at Slate. “Some sexist provocations are too tiresome to counter with a full-throated feminist argument. Sometimes, all you need is a GIF.” Or a tweet.
“I genuinely wonder what side The Unabomber would come down on re: #GamerGate”
-@Bro_Pair
Despite all the threats and hate and invective, folks are finding things to laugh at in #GamerGate. I imagine there’s a real need for catharsis among those for who receive the kind of bile that so often bubbles up from the Internet. I know, also, that starting in at least the aughts, the earnestness of reactionary movements became almost funny. (I say
almost because they are dangerous, too, and I don’t want diminish that. Perhaps there’s a privilege in being able to laugh at them.) I wonder at men who wear tricorn hats or post
Matrix screengrabs unironically. I wonder at how they can’t see the irony of their masquerade. They dress up as revolutionaries; they long for the
status quo.
The thing about this particular masquerade, though, is that the dance is so subtle, you might not think you’re dancing at all.
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We shouldn’t have to convince men that the patriarchy ought to be dismantled brick by brick because it will benefit them. But every time a man commits an act of violence — either small or large — against an other, I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be better for me if we could take traditional masculinity out back and beat the everloving shit out of it. I think I would have had a happier childhood and adolescence if I weren’t both surrounded by and subject to the whys and wherefores of American masculinity. But more to the point, every time a man commits an act of violence against an other, I can’t help but say, there but for the grace of God go I — and a small part of me can’t help but wonder what my crimes might be.
I suppose that one of the many awful things about the patriarchy is its reach — its inexorability. Quinn, Sarkeesian, and so many others have felt its cold touch, but its iron grip is just as strong on the men of #GamerGate as it is on the women who have been harassed.
Adam Baldwin, who acted in both Firefly and Angel, who gets in Twitter fights with Clickhole articles and is credited with coining the term #GamerGate, was threatened with doxing. He wasn’t the only one. Women who support #GamerGate have received rape threats (no link, but I saw a couple and they made my skin crawl). Outside of Reddit forums and #GamerGate hashtag on Twitter and the myriad nooks and crannies where gamers find each other on the web, very little is written about these incidents. Very little is said about the men who reported receiving knives or syringes in the mail.
What happened to Sarkeesian isn’t trolling, and neither is this.
When Brianna Wu was doxed, Satya Pasupuleti at Niche Gamer wrote: “So far there has not been any evidence linking the doxing to #GamerGate.” I’m not going to make the same mistake that many #GamerGaters do. I’m not going to say that some third party is doxing and threatening. I’m not going to say that it’s a ruse, that they’re false flags or sockpuppets.
It’s all-too-easy to imagine neck-bearded, mouth-breathing young men, fingers stained by cheetos as they tap away at their meaningless games. We’re talking about games, after all. But we can’t have it both ways. If games are not an art form, replete with the complex and symbiotic relationship to society that all art has, then I wonder what the hell critics like Sarkeesian are even doing.
The jokes at the expense of gamers are understandable, and often raw and real and born of rage — and maybe there’s something valuable in dismissing them as manbabies or whatever your chosen epithet is. But if we’re all together in the morass of patriarchy, then I wonder about the efficacy of hating the gamer and not the game.
I think of George Hewes often. It’s a poignant image: he and his friends readying themselves for a night of righteous protest. It’s worth remembering, though, that they picked their costume. As problematic as we’d find it now, they chose a mask that symbolized freedom to them. I doubt most #GamerGaters could tell you what they cloak themselves in.
When the discourse falls ill, troll at the earnest movement in masquerade. Troll to the heavens when the language of the oppressor is all that’s left or when the cost of seriousness is too high. Remember, though, that while trolling is a strange and potent sort of medicine for what ails us, it is no panacea. Troll, but remember compassion is a better balm.
(Also published at Medium.)