In the last few months there has been a pretty interesting debate going on behind the scenes of the video game community. This event, dubbed "GamerGate", has reached some public attention (discussed on the Colbert Report among others...), but hasn't seen the same airtime as other events in the greater debate on gender and sexual assault that has been going on for most of 2014.
In short, GamerGate has been an ongoing controversy about how women and women's ideas have been considered in video game culture. At the heart of it lies the inability for some men to just say "Yeah. I can totally see how this would be offensive".
Now, I'm generalizing genders, as there is certainly a large population of women that say "feminists are being too PC." Sure. There are also men that are very supporting of the incorporating "feminine values" into the gaming community. And there are also women who are just showing up to posting boards yelling "check your privilege", without a single thought to the fact that some people don't know what that means.
Now I thought of this as an isolated incident, but I did think briefly to myself "why don't we do anything to talk to nerds about sexual violence and gender issues?" Now just to give you a taste, a ton of women who have participated in this discussion have received DEATH OR RAPE threats! This is a sexual violence issue as well as a gender issue. So why isn't it a conversation we are having as a part of the greater?
Earlier today, I was reading an article posted by Cracked.com about a bunch of "ignorant jokes" from surprisingly good comedians. The article talked about a specific joke from Louis CK who states that vaginas should have a daintier name, because he imagines flowers when he sees them. The author then suggested that this link has a potentially negative impact on women (and is simply not true, due to the overwhelming strength of the vagina).
People FLIPPED OUT.
I think I could get away with critiquing Gandhi before getting away with critiquing Louis CK. But why? Seriously, Cracked.com is a website that exists for the express purpose of over-analyzing popular culture. A recurrent series is "the horrific implications of <insert movie here>" How is this at all different than saying "the patriarchal implications of <insert stand-up>" when your source is a humor website. Both don't actually comment on the quality of the media, they only hyper-anaylize.
Plus, don't give me that PC stuff, you can't say something is just "over political correctness" when REAL people get offended.
The point is, for whatever reason, there is a group of men out there who are getting extremely angry about inserting our feminist noses in their business. And, though I can't put my finger on it, I feel like there is some shared quality to being super defensive about keeping video-games for men, and being super defensive of a comedian's reputation. Its somewhere between being a nerd and being a hipster (and I use those terms as identities, not as insults).
So where is the conversation about them? Why are we leaving this enormous population out of our greater conversation about sexual violence, gender and patriarchy. Why are we spending tons of money to educate fraternities but ignoring the gaming club? At the very least, why are we willing to engage a fraternity population, but we are willing to dismiss the online population as stupid, harmless or just obnoxious. Seriously, when someone held up a sign at Texas Tech that said "No means yes, yes means anal", people FREAKED OUT. That happens on the internet ALL THE TIME. That single event got more press coverage than GamerGate.
Perhaps its because we don't view nerds as high risk perpetrators, and I think part of that has to do with an idea of masculinity that even the staunchest feminist still might have. Simply put, we don't imagine these people having sex, or as powerful enough to rape anyone or to follow through on a threat.
So internet, I say to you please broaden your conversations, and go deeper.
