A response to the article on Polygon:
Jonathan Macintosh @radicalbytes - is the man behind theTropes vs Women in Video Games series that Anita Sarkeesian is known for. He describes himself on Twitter as "Transformative storyteller. Pop culture critic." Which can be roughly translated as professional bullshitter.
The games media's embrace of people like Jon and Anita and their brand of argument (boilerplate feminist critique/ professional victimhood) is troubling, but that's a rant for another blog in itself. The thing that annoys me most is they are given a platform despite a demonstrated lack of knowledge ofgaming community and gaming itself, having dabbled in it only to serve their own agenda.
Rather than refute the list point by point, I'll just raise some general objections. Really the list has things which are straight up untrue and a fair bit of redundancy. JordanOwen42 has a good video breaking down the list point by point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4NqZal3Lyk&list=WLKR8MPmIOdYr8n3l6qlhIfQ&index=19
The chief objection I have to this list is that we as gamers have always moderated our interaction with the community in order to have the experience we want to have. Their is no assumption of enjoying a particularly desired level of community just by logging into a game online. There is no welcome mat rolled out for anyone. Community and our part in it is cultivated, and I don't believe women are excluded from finding good community online. There just shouldn't be this expectation of avoiding having to deal with shit from anonymous d-bags. That the trolling is tailored to gender isn't evidence of women dealing with more than men, its just a fact of life. People attack the point of difference. People are hardly going to attack the masculinity of female gamers.
Women have the same tools at their disposal as men to deal with undesired online interactions. Block, mute, report, cultivate a friends list of people you like to play with and fire back some of your own trash talk to even the field of play. The entire mentality of Jonathan and those who think like him is why the term white knight exists. Women are delicate snowflakes and we need to ride in on our noble steeds to protect them.
There is no exemption to dealing with shit for men. This should be immediately apparent for anyone paying attention to happenings within the community. There's this tendency to paint this narrative of women receiving a greater level of unfair treatment, inspite of stories routinely emerging of men copping it to. Just look at Phil Fish quitting game development, prominent youtubers like totalbiscuit disengaging from the reddit community for the toll it was taking on him. People don't hold back online, its just part of the nature of online interaction.
If you can't deal with anonymous, inarticulate trolls sending you mean messages, then you may just need to close your twitter account and just game without a headset on or use any of the other means available to create the space you want to play in. You don't have to find acceptance among the scene kids to enjoy gaming. The reality is the goal here is to colonize gaming culture with their collectivist, pc mentality. That's why these articles are written carpet bombing the whole community, using guilt to conscript us to this crusade to remake the community in their image.
I just don't see it as my responsibility to reshape the community, I am just one participant in it. I always look to respond in an intelligent manner in the comments section and be respectful online and in games. The collectivist crusade just won't work, because the community just isn't what they insist it is and we are more interested in just getting on with our gaming.
