iaman

It's like the lovechild of Aperture Science sentry turrets and Droid commercials circa 2010

Yeah, this seems like the most dangerous thing about (some of) the discussion I've seen from people that are reasonably well-respected within the crowd. Not to conflate this issue with an issue that is *significantly* larger and more pernicious in our culture at large, but there are studies that suggest associating oneself with people who make sexist jokes or allowing oneself to otherwise be exposed to them increases one's likelihood to blame victims for rape and identify or sympathize with rapists. It's a stretch, but it's entirely possible (though unproven) that we are seeing a similar thing happen in this case (Namely: that some of the folks who are well-respected in the crowd for seeming neutral or unbiased may, in fact, have some biases that they themselves cannot possibly speak to due to being neck-deep in a crowd which, at least superficially, has folks being quite sexist or misogynistic (whether these people are trolls or not)). It would be interesting to see a similar study done on this subject in particular, but I dunno how it could be done in a way that wouldn't be accused of painting the crowd in an unfair light, given that every time I've seen them interact with folks bringing up the fact that their tag is full of folks who (trolls or otherwise) are harassing people, they immediately deny that those folks are a part of the movement while simultaneously claiming that the most angry/trollish/hostile elements of the set of people criticizing their movement are representative of everybody who takes issue with their views. It seems like there's a distinct lack of intellectual rigor/honesty in the debate at large, which is distressing given that it was initially started either A ) In response to the Zoe stuff, or B ) In response to a series of articles in response to a bunch of people (whether a part of the movement or not) sending significant amounts of harassment to women in the game dev/journo community (whether or not you believe that happened. For the record, I trust Anita when she tells me that she has been harassed related to this situation, because I could see a whole lot of it all over the internet even before she herself said anything about Zoe's situation, whether they are a part of the movement or not), and one side of the movement seems to be reticent to acknowledge that either A is the case or that B cannot only be treated as a distinct (and, as they assert, colluded) set of pieces and need to be looked at in the context in which they were written, whereas the other side appears to be more or less okay with letting the movement's beginning be defined by either event as long as people don't try to divorce the discussion from its context. Frank discussions about journalistic ethics are things that I want to happen often and loudly (but with civility) in our medium, but it just seems like there's a large amount of people involved in this who are unable (due to living in a society that is actively hostile to them, or just plain not caring, or being trolls) to approach it with honesty and civility. I'd be interested in seeing the absolute most civil, honest, and reasonable voices from games journalism and from folks who honestly take issue with aspects of games journalism have a discussion in a safe space where we can guarantee nobody will be harassed, but that seems like a pipe dream at this point. EDIT: It is amazing how much I contorted my words in this post to make it clear that I am not trying to conflate the trolls with the folks who appear to have legitimate concerns