rhube:

There’s something rotten deep within gaming culture. Andrew thinks it’s time we cut it out.

This article is well worth a read. There’s been a whole bunch of shit going on with the targeting of women this week of which I have heard strangely only rumours. The women themselves (understandably) didn’t want to talk about it – Anita Sarkeesian noted on her Twitter that she had received threats and had to call in the police, but was now safe. This gives a very thorough account, passionately written. Lines such as:

What we’re seeing is the gamification of a social struggle.

Seem to cut to something fundamental in what can seem a bewildering onslaught of mind-bogglingly unacceptable behaviour. Yes, it is because they view it as a game. And because they are the ones with the privilege, they are free to do so. They are free to engage without emotional connection. To treat it as not real, or not really mattering. Because they have no idea what it is like to be on the other end of that. To them, it is a battle for territory that must be defended, because… uh… well, if you have something in a game, you defend it, right? That’s what you do.

Nevertheless, some comments make this stand out as something obviously written by a man – by someone on the outside looking in with horror:

Before the internet, this didn’t happen

Andrew exclaims in outrage.

I’m sorry, Andrew, yes it did. Men did view women’s lives and issues and ambitions and dreams as something to be totted up and scored against. 4chan is not the first echo chamber. You think gentlemen’s clubs, boardrooms, even playgrounds haven’t been echo chambers before? Men have been listening to themselves and ignoring the reality of women’s lives and needs and treating them as pawns in games for a long, long time.

I say this not to knock Andrew. This is a good article in many ways. A thunderingly reassuring article. I was reading it thinking ‘This is great. Finally people are listening to what an awful and impermissible situation this is!’ I was thinking about recommending it to everyone I knew. And then I stopped and asked myself why.

Andrew isn’t saying anything new. He isn’t the first person to write passionately about it. He isn’t the first person to be articulate about it. I think what got my attention was that it was a guy reacting articulately and passionately at what seemed to be an appropriate level. Finally.

But guys aren’t ‘people’. People have recognised that this problem exists for years. Decades. The last time I can remember gaming and not having had boys tell me gaming wasn’t for me and I didn’t know what I was doing (often in very harsh terms) I must have been… five? six? And I probably only didn’t have that earlier in that my family was a bit ahead of the game in terms of having a computer at home.

And this whole gaming thing is just an extension of what goes on in the rest of our lives. It happens when we walk down the street. The name calling, the lewd suggestions/demands. And it’s not that rare for that to include threats of violence, and of sexual assault. Or for that to end in violence or sexual assault, even death.

Yes, in an explicitly gaming environment the game/territory aspect of it does get upped. But I think the real difference, what’s really making men shocked now, rather than at an earlier time, is that they are aware of it.

They’re starting to see quite how much of it we endure. Because it’s right there on the page in black and white. It’s not when we’re walking alone. It’s not when you didn’t even notice you it because it was said with such a casual tone. This stuff happens every day where you can’t see it, and it happens right under your nose. And men who think they are good men – not sexist – encourage it or even join in, because tone and familiarity and male bonding with physically present males casts it in a light that makes it seem OK. Not that serious.

You literally have no idea how much this goes on in all arenas of life outside this one area to which your attention has finally been drawn.

And it’s good that it’s been drawn. And it is shocking and appalling. And the extent of the suffering women like Anita Sarkeesian endure is part of a culture that needs some serious overhaul.

But I feel like it’s important to stress that women have been threatened and beaten up and raped and killed for daring to voice opinions before. Gaming is not isolated. It is part of a culture of misogyny where men don’t view women as real and where rape is trivialised and… UGH.

I wasn’t going to write a great long screed about this.

I was gonna point at the article, say it had its flaws, but was good and worth reading, but here I am again.

And this is why I think the article stood out to me even though I was slowly accumulating flaws – the kind of flaws women aren’t allowed to get away with when we speak on these matters – as I read through: because what stood out was not the content or the passion or the articulateness. What was different is that when it comes from women it’s something we have all heard a million times before, and are used to tuning out. And that us women who write about misogyny are tired to death of repeating and seeming to make no difference.

And it makes me mad that a man’s voice can seem new and fresh even though lack of intimacy with the subject matter means a well-meaning man misses IMPORTANT things and reaches conclusions that are way shallower than we need them to be. But at the end of the day I am tired, and it is nice to hear a guy speaking up where our voices are not heard.

And I am conflicted about that. But I’m too tired to say anything else right now.

Go read the thing. Then watch a Feminist Frequency video, why don’t you.