The Feature

A fight for ethics, or blind misogyny?

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Andrew Kenway
Team Member

recent movement has been taking over the Internet: #Gamergate. It is one of the most

written about topics of the last month, and both its actions and motives have been
divisive. According to knowyourmeme.com, #Gamergate is a movement that exists to stand up
for gamers as a whole, and claims to be about ethics in videogame advertising and journalism.
However, proponents of the group produce criminal threats of death and rape almost
exclusively focused on female journalists, critics, and game developers. These actions do not
line up with their mission statement. Is this just a misunderstood group of hobbyists whose
good intentions are being poisoned by a demented few, or is this dangerous group intent on
silencing feminist dissent?

It would be easy to dismiss this whole mess as a pointless Internet feud, or a futile flame war
that could just be ignored until it went away. Critics of the movement are being threatened
with home invasion, rape, and death, according to The Guardian’s Jessica Valenti.

The start of the whole fiasco began with an oddly innocuous event. According to Todd
VanDerWerff, Zoe Quinn was a female indie game developer, and the creator of the game
Depression Quest. Her game received multiple positive reviews, praising it as educational, and
saying that it challenges what a game could be. An angry ex-boyfriend claimed that she was
cheating on him, and that she had slept with reviewers in order to get positive ratings for
her game. It was not long before death threats and harassment against Quinn on all forms

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of media began. After a few weeks of lurking in Internet Relay Chat forums, Quinn herself
found and tweeted proof of organized and named operations, sleeper cells, plots to hack her
emails, and discussions about what they could and could not use publically against her.

Sarkeesian is a feminist video game critic of Internet fame who has been involved

in this mess near the beginning after supporting Quinn when abuse rained down on
her. Because of her support, Sarkeesian received an unending stream of abuse as well.
She told The Salt Lake Tribune that her lecture at USU was cancelled after multiple,
specific death threats promising a mass shooting if she were allowed to speak.

| @josswhedon

(i Joss Whedon © ¥ ame

TERRORISM ISN'T BLOWING THINGS UP. IT'S
USING THE FEAR OF VIOLENCE TO COW US AND
CONTROL OUR ACTIONS.
theverge.com/2014/10/14/697...

\ 10:94 PM - 14 Oct 2014 J)