Indie game developer Zoe Quinn was the target of a “virulent” harassment campaign after her ex-boyfriend made allegations against her that included her cheating on him with a journalist for Kotaku. Source: Wikimedia commons

We accept letters to the editor. All letters must be signed and are typically 400 to 800 words in length. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and content. To send your letter to the editor, email it to [email protected]. To learn more about the “GamerGate” controversy, click here.

Dear Decaturish,

“GamerGate” all started because of a break up. A guy blogs about his game designer ex-girlfriend sleeping with a member of the media in an effort to gain favorable reviews for her game.

So let’s examine this claim of it being about journalistic integrity shall we?

A woman, who clearly has a reasonably high self-esteem (I say this because she has succeeded in designing and building a game in a very male dominated industry) slept with a guy. Her motives for doing so may or may not have been to gain something aside from a night (or several) nights of good fun with a member of the opposite sex that happens to be a member of the media. If she did do it to gain favorable reviews for her game, so what? It’s not like men haven’t been doing the same thing as a means to get what they want for centuries.

So the jilted ex’s blog goes up and here is where it sparks a wildfire that has resulted in several women being harassed and threatened to the point that they fear for their safety and have fled their own homes.  And over what? The need to dominate, bully, “put people in their place” and undervalue the female members of our species.  This is the part when the worst of our kind show their true colors.

For those that aren’t involved with or pay attention to the gaming, comic and all out “nerd” communities I feel that a bit of history is needed. For as long as these industries and communities have been around there has been an overwhelming sense of misogyny and male dominated entitlement. All of the writers/developers were men and with the exception of Wonder Woman, all of the characters that weren’t relegated to side kick status were male, though I suppose Pepper Potts really did run Tony Starks life but she still operated from another role female characters were relegated to, love interest or “girl Friday’s.” So we hapless women complained, and were told to do something about it.

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So we did. Women opened their own game development companies, started writing their own comics and everything was right with the world right? Wrong.  The bullying and harassment of women in these industries and communities isn’t something new that was started with “GamerGate.” It has been ongoing, though now, because of “GamerGate” more attention has been called to it, and rightfully so.

Now for an admission on my part: I’m a female gamer, but I’m not really big on pc/system games, nor am I a huge comic book fan. I tend to lean more towards board games and table top or live action roleplaying games as my niche in the nerd world, but my fourteen year old daughter does. She is a huge pc/system gamer, and she loves comic books and Manga so even though I don’t play the games or read the comics, I have noticed the misogynistic nature of many of these things, and that saddens me but I know that people, mostly women yes but not only women, have been working to change this.

Though now, a group of trolls given courage by the anonymity that the internet affords has decided to stop even this slow progress in its tracks by bullying and intimidating those working to make a more inclusive industry and community. It seems as though they fear that if women can succeed in making female characters be seen as more than decoration or victims that they will lose their outlet for their sick need to dominate women in a way that is unhealthy and uses no safe-words.

It can be argued that this is America, we have the right to free speech, and that these men are simply exercising it, and this is correct. However, the Westboro Baptist Church exercises their right to free speech and while everyone hates them and what they stand for, we recognize and protect their rights to their own views.

So here is where I exercise my own right to free speech. You aren’t tough. You aren’t men. You are scared little boys that are living in the basement of your parents’ house, playing games and writing hate mail because you would much rather blame your lack of meaningful employment on that *Bitch* in the office that got you fired because your off color and sexist jokes were just too much for the ego that “Feminazi” to handle or whatever you tell yourself to feel better.

Everyone deserves a seat at the proverbial table. Everyone deserves to be represented in a fashion that is respectful and celebrates us as people, be it in front of a computer writing code for the next game, in line at the comic book store, or with a game controller in their hand trying to win the next “boss” fight. So what if some of us have boobs?

Miranda Rosenblum