Aram Zucker-Scharff

“

What are the obligations of men in the industry, in the wake of all this?

It’s so simple, but they need to be listening to women. That’s it.

”

– Standing in the Firing Squad: An Interview with Brianna Wu.

Everything Wrong (And Right) With the #GamerGate ‘Bill of Rights’

“

I don’t think that’s true, and even if it were, I wouldn’t blame women for voluntarily choosing to play something soothing and non-threatening in their free time, since they spend so much of the rest of their time being forced to play a terrifying survival horror MMORPG colloquially known as “The Internet”. Women are the hardest hardcore gamers there are, by miles.

You know those games where you get to choose your character class at the start, weighing up the pros and cons of picking a Warrior over an Archmage, or what have you? Never, ever choose “woman” on your first playthrough of The Internet, because you’ll face an immediate difficulty spike. Suddenly it’s a stealth game with nowhere to hide, one with hundreds of respawning enemies waiting to attack you the moment you make a noise or stand out in any way whatsoever.

”

– Gamergate: the internet is the toughest game in town – if you’re playing as a woman.

“We live in a world where politics leads to a 38-point gap on whether a movie about slavery should win an Oscar — an issue, for the record, that neither the Democratic nor Republican parties had any official, or even unofficial, position on. But partisans knew intuitively which side to take.”

– Gamergate and the politicization of absolutely everything.