As a feminist and a gamer, I feel like I should understand this issue better. I really should know better than to look for information from Cracked commenters, but I am apparently a hypocritical bitch and fucking dumb for saying things that I never actually said.
I’ve been trying to understand what exactly the allegations are and what facts support them, because so far the only people I’ve found to talk about it are complete fucking loons who are either frothing with misogynist and/or nerd rage or claiming this is all about gender. I have the feeling the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
So please, consider this your soapbox. Inform me. If all you have to say is she’s a manipulative slut bitch whore please go talk about that in another thread. I’m trying to understand what the hell happened here.
You’re not going to get much info, because all there IS to this is a frothing mess of stupidity.
Short version: Zoe’s jilted ex goes out and does the text-version of “revenge porn” and claims a lot of unsubstantiated bullshit (or, even if parts ARE true, should be the private concern of the two people having consensual sexual relations, and doesn’t in any way impact on someone’s professional abilities). Friends and “friends” of said ex spread this crap all around the internet, where other men who feel like their turf is being RUINED by teh wimmins jump on board, and use it as an excuse to try and drive off one of the hated usurpers by going totally batshit crazy.
Okay. That was basically my understanding too - of the misogyny part. But I saw a lot of feminists slamming her too, and someone mentioned her sabotaging a charity or depression board or something.
And obviously there are gamers that are pissed off at her who are not misogynists.
Sure, everybody has some part of their work and life that will piss someone off.
But the reason this all erupted is the really amazing crazy intersection of gaming culture, men’s rights, and nerd-rage. Someone ought to write a book that people will read in 150 years and disbelieve.
She was blamed for sabotaging a charity but frankly she didn’t have that kind of power. She was critical of it since it was paying just a pittance to the people it was trying to attract. The group that was running it is trying to blame her for everything that went wrong.
Mostly it is a butthurt ‘boyfriend’ and slut shaming. Zoe did make some mistakes along the way (making some youtube legal claims, IIRC) but mostly it was just a poor reaction to the horrorswell.
If you saw feminists slamming her, they were probably going on the assumption that the boyfriend’s allegations were true, and didn’t like the idea that she used sex to get ahead professionally.
The charity angle (which might be where she’s pulling some heat from feminists) regards a crowd-funded effort to promote female game designers started by a group calling itself Fine Young Capitalists. Quinn (among others) was critical of the project, as it seemed more geared to exploiting developers than helping them. The crowd-funding eventually fell apart. Blaming this on Quinn is pretty specious. She doesn’t have anything like that sort of pull in the industry or the gaming community, and she was hardly the only one raising these concerns.
In response to the failed FYC project, Quinn started her own project to help promote female developers. She’s raised some money already, and hasn’t visibly spent it on anything yet, so some people have started suggesting that she’s stealing the cash. I’ve not yet seen anything on this part of the controversy that didn’t come from someone with a huge axe to grind on the sex thing, so I don’t think the accusations here are very reliable.
Take one female gamer who is a little bit outspoken, mix with the posting from my parents basement culture of sites like 4chan and reddit, etc. Throw is some spicy sex stuff, Let percolate. There ya go.
She’s a female developer, intelligent, professional, and sexually active. That’s pretty darn threatening to the basement-dwelling crowd. Devotees of 4chan see themselves as the next Anonymous, only with more cuss words, took it upon themselves to puke all over the internet.
He posted it in multiple locations. One of which was 4chan. He was not so much whining about her ‘cheating’ but rather who she was sleeping with, which was a list (if true) of minor game journalists, developers, etc. Since she had a game out or coming out this meant that there was OBVIOUSLY SEX FOR GOOD REVIEWS AND DEVELOPMENT and their petty rage went apeshit. After that several people started just piling on alleged crimes like the FYC nonsense. Read the OP of the thread in the Pit if you want to get an idea of how they padded their list.
Zoe Quinn released a game. Later, her ex-boyfriend wrote a long blog post about how she had been unfaithful to him with multiple men, some of whom worked in the game industry including in game journalism. People found a link between her and one person who had once wrote a little about her game (but which was apparently written prior to their relationship).
A number of people took it upon themselves to harass Quinn and used her relationship with the journalist as a pretext (although even if that was substantiated, it wouldn’t have in any way excused the harassment). Gamergate was the banner for those who claimed to be upset about gaming journalism and the influence of personal relationships on it. Of course, some/many/most had little real concern about that and were just trying to hassle Quinn for twisted kicks. Quinn was accused of other things such as sabotaging an effort to bring more female developers/writers into gaming.
Melding into this is a person named Anita Sarkeesian who drew a bunch of reaction herself via a project to make a series of YouTube videos pointing out video game tropes against women she felt were harmful. She had released a video recently before the Gamergate thing exploded and Sarkeesian & Quinn were conflated into a single anti-video-game-feminist force (by anti-video game I mean the current state thereof, not that Quinn hates games). The counter reaction to all this was numerous columns and blogs about how the “white male gamer” was “dead” and “gamer” as a culture was either dying or alive and horribly misogynistic, etc. Against that, some writers were harassed or threatened by the same sorts who were harassing Quinn & Sarkeesian. Reactions and counter reactions from both camps kept this going for another week or two although the whole thing as a current even seems to have largely died off.
My own opinion is that none of the abuse towards Quinn has been in any way warranted (brave stance, I know) and that Quinn was unfortunate enough to have her “scandal” break while people were still up in arms about Sarkeesian. Had it happened months apart, I don’t know if this would have blown up the way it did. But the attempts to make legitimate claims against Quinn (i.e., not that she’s a dirty, dirty whore) are so weak that, without the greater feminist video game kerfluffle to bring it all together, those who were harassing Quinn wouldn’t have had anything to hide behind and dropped it fairly quickly rather than turning it into a big event.
I tried to figure this out a couple of weeks ago, and aside from the stuff mentioned in this thread, I think there’s two things going on here. The first is that Zoe Quinn is suffering from the Kardashian effect. She’s a junior level game developer with a scant resume who is somehow becoming a minor celebrity in the gaming community, based not on talent or creative insight but on stupid drama. I think people react negatively to that. The second is simply John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
I don’t think any of the accusations made against her hold any water at all, and she certainly doesn’t deserve any of the ire being spit at her on the internet. On the other hand, people who make YouTube videos on all but the safest of topics are destined to see the worst of humanity in the comments. People say this is about misogyny in the gaming community, I think this is about a bigger issue of misogyny and racism running rampant by assholes, primarily young men, on the internet.
