Gadarene, I will get to your second and subsequent posts presently, but I've never been able to resist low-hanging fruit....
A few things should be noted about the people you've listed there (I don't know about Helen Lewis) - they're all agitators.
This is a clear indication that you did not read the articles linked, since Helen Lewis's article is a compilation of testimonies from
nine other bloggers. By all means, take a closer look and let me know exactly what each of
them did to deserve it.
Rebecca Watson is
outright openly in favour of doxxing people she perceives to be fair game.
People send her death threats, rape threats, and sexually harass her, all of which are illegal, and she deserves it because she doesn't protect the anonymity of her attackers when they use their own email addresses and IPs?
Yeah, she's totally asking for it.
Zoe Quinn openly attempted to blacklist a videogame developer,
Brad Wardell and spent time encouraging her followers and to harass (amongst agitating herself) to this end. What was she trying to blacklist him for? He sent a tweet to an artist encouraging him to apply to Stardock. Unknown to him the person he sent a tweet to had previously posted a disparaging comic strip including Zoe Quinn.
She assumed, and I would argue deliberately that they were connected and accused him of trying to hire that person because of that comic. She unloaded on him, her followers did and he faced a barrage of abuse and attacks and even had a civil case against him, that he won, bought up. It was all done, all orchestrated because he was an unperson in their eyes, fair game, and needed to be intimidated into renouncing support for GG or hounded out of the industry. She's not an innocent flower and has not, to my knowledge, apologised to Brad Wardell.
I don't know Zoe Quinn personally so I can't speak to her character, but I'm curious how you deduce that an action she took in December of 2014 (attacking Wardell) justifies the death threats, rape threats, and sexual harassment she received in August and September of that year. Are those people in possession of some miraculous future-sight technology, or was this just a preemptive attack?
Yeah, she was totally asking for it (in the future).
Anita Sarkeesian is a huckster of the most obvious variety. Originally endorsed Suey Park's #CancelColbert hashtag and then appeared on the show herself.
#CancelColbert happened in 2014, Anita began getting harassed in 2012. More miraculous future-sight! Also, someone making a poor judgement call, then later changing their mind, completely justifies sending them death threats and rape threats right?
Yeah, she was totally asking for it.
Her producer, Jonathan McIntosh is an anti-gamer in the same way than Jack Thompson was. He appears to loathe violent video games in their entirety.
She works with someone who holds a controversial opinion?
Yeah, she's totally asking for it.
In any case the vast majority of abuse that these figures receive are from anonymous egg accounts on Twitter that have an account lifespan of days if not hours. They retweet, sensationalise, create a moral panic and portray them as representative of their critics in an attempt to smear anyone who criticises them as misogynistic and hateful. In creating this atmosphere they do more harm for women in gaming than any 14 year old 8chan dork could. Do Zoe, Anita et al receive criticism? Of course, they're deliberately divisive and partisan figures. They receive a lot of criticism. They use this springboard as a basis to suggest they receive a lot of abuse and through their friends in the media and through the technological ignorance of the media receive positive headlines and guest writing slots about how progressive they are, how they're just trying to reform gaming's attitudes towards women and fight against harassment and threats towards women.
Having your websites and personal accounts hacked = criticism.
Getting death threats mailed to your personal address = criticism.
Your parents and relatives getting called on their own phone lines to be told what an awful (insert sexualized expletive here) you are = criticism.
People telling your employers to fire you = criticism.
Not remaining quiet about the abuse you are receiving = attention whoring.
Yeah, no attitudes need to reformed here.
Underneath all of that they've done some nasty things and said some nasty things themselves that never get enough media attention.
Baseless accusation without linked proof. If you weren't going to bring your best to the game, why show up at all? If any of them have truly done something so awful that it justifies the insults, harassment, death threats, rape threats, outright stalking, why not tell us all about that instead of bringing up a bunch of stuff that happened AFTER they started getting attacked?
Jessica Valenti is also a troll. Nothing more there needs to be said. She's a baiter.
Baseless accusation without linked proof.
Did you actually read that page either? I'm thinking not. I included her on purpose.
But hey, no, you're right. Every single woman I mentioned (including the nine you neglected to even notice) totally deserved to be sexually harassed by hundreds of people. There's nothing misogynistic going on here folks! Just a guy casually dismissing hundreds of sexualized personal attacks against thirteen women and implying that they deserved it for stuff they hadn't even done yet.
[/sarcasm]