My post about whether or not the #gamergate crusade is anti-feminism has gotten some attention. It should be noted that my point was not that #gamergate is misogynist or anti-women – that’s a much longer and more complex discussion though here’s a few strong hints about how I feel – but the idea that it’s anti-feminist is pretty clean-cut. Which is to say, there is a strain throughout GamerGate that is virulently opposed to “SJW” discussion of games making its way into the press, or “SJW” theory making its way into the games (“Games should have ideology!”) In almost every example, “SJW” seems to refer to some sort of feminist critique or theory, including those that are presented fairly, academically and without judgmentalism.
Here, an author does a wildly unscientific and unverifiable data analysis (corrected from ‘poll’) and says ‘nope, we’re all good here!’ His secondary ‘evidence’ is that probably-feminist-oriented related tags appeared in #gamergate tweets appeared only half as often as probably-game-ethics-related tags. That’s actually quite a lot. If I talk about money 2/3rds of the time and sex only 1/3rd of the time, it sure would be silly to imply that sex isn’t important to me.
I completely agree that most people claim that ethics and corruption of journalism are the primary goals (although they do an extremely poor job of defining that, when grilled), and more than a few point to SJW and feminist-related issues as lesser or non-factors. but they are definitely a major factor for some others. Perhaps if there was some sort of guiding organization, they could clear this misunderstanding up and distance the cause from the people who are poisonous. Still, as long as anti-feminist crap is posted with anything even close to the frequency it’s being treated now, many people and large organizations are going to treat it like it’s radioactive.
@SabrinaLianne wants me to stop ‘erasing’ feminism. Her complaint is specifically that I have a total disdain for Christina Hoff Sommers brand of feminism. It’s my opinion, of course, but I find Christina Hoff Sommers to be as much a feminist as Zell Miller was a democrat. You know, the guy who spoke at the Republican convention to tell them that democrats were idiots if they voted for John Kerry. Sommers has made a career out of attempting to discredit and undermine every significant cause of the modern mainstream feminist movement. (I also find her to be a world class troll, albeit one who is terrible at logic).
So you disagree, and you agree with her? That’s fine. I think that you are, at best, not doing a lot of good for what I think is important for most mainstream feminists, and I don’t particularly trust the motives of a feminist who seems to be more at home at an MRA forum than a feminist one. Still, I haven’t tried to ‘silence’ her or you. Both of you are free to keep trying to convince me and other people I’m wrong. However, someone IS trying to silence Feminists: #GamerGate.
The same time that @SabrinaLianne’s post went up,my twitter feed was alternating between people retweeting her post, and updates on something called ‘#OperationDiggingDiGra’.
#GamerGate Here’s the game we’re going to play: #OperationDiggingDiGRA Objective: Fact-check, verify all of feminist papers in DiGRA.
— Homer Ruglia Beoulve (@ramzaruglia) October 3, 2014
That’s right. It was a matter of EXTREME IMPORTANCE for Academic papers written by academics to be fact-checked and verified. You know, the ones that had already gone through the Academic peer review process anyway. But not ALL of them. Just the filthy FEMINIST ones. Because the secret DiGRA Illuminati is infecting our press and our game devs.
There is no other way to describe this than an academic witch hunt. And it highlights very clearly how IMPORTANT the culture war aspect of #Gamergate is to some. Not to you? Great. But I see shit like this in the #Gamergate tag every day. You may think that they’re just outliers, but in any online community, the loudest, most obnoxious, extreme and outlandish personalities and ideas will attract the most attention. Which is why a group that can’t police itself effectively is going to struggle to have any sort of unity of vision. It’s also how Intel can be bashed, accurately, in the press for bowing to a group who is attempting to remove Feminist influence from games and games press. Because some of #gamergate definitely is.
The Anti-DiGRA movement hit its pinnacle last night when this conspiracy clusterfuck hit the Alex Jones show (jump to 3:30 in the movie below). Yes, THAT Alex Jones show, the guy who has never found a black helicopter tinfoil hat theory he didn’t like (although to be fair they apparently had a guest host for this segment).
Gamergate is a group of gamers who have actually been able to expose collusion between the media and a thinktank called Digra, which is supported by DARPA… [DiGRA] specializes in injecting social engineering into video games. They’ve tried to… take up the cause of racism, feminism, not in the real support of equality, but in order to pit races and genders against each other.”
Translation: THESE feminists ideas are SO DANGEROUS that they will not only DESTROY YOUR GAMES but also are being used by the GOVERNMENT to DESTROY SOCIETY. Heroic gamers are working tirelessly to SHUT DOWN these dangerous ideas before the corrupted press can print them and game developers get brainwashed.
THAT is an attempt to erase feminist theory from the field of games through mindless bigotry. Maybe not YOUR feminist thoughts and ideals. But definitely valid feminist theory, research, and criticism.
And THAT is why some people think that your cause is anti-feminist. Because for more than enough of you, it IS, in a crazy conspiracy-theory sort of way. And that’s what rises to the top of our twitter feeds when we dare peek out of our fallout shelters into the lunatic abyss.
Conflating “SJW” with feminists. Stay classy.
I have yet to see a GGer give a meaningful reply in how they think they’re different. How is modern third/fourth-wave feminism different from “SJWs,” a label you put on people rather than them putting on themselves?
I’m no expert in third-wave feminism, but there are opinions expressed by SJWs that run completely contrary to my view of what feminism should be. I’m hoping it at least boils down to a misunderstanding of third-wave theory, but if not, I guess that makes me an anti-feminist.
Things like:
– Anybody who isn’t a straight, white male is inherently being oppressed, and accordingly sexism against men and racism against white people doesn’t exist.
– “Rape culture” exists – rape is considered one of the vilest things you can do in western society, worse than murder, so how does “rape culture” exist?
– Criticising a woman in any way = misogyny
– Sexism = misogyny [Misogyny means a HATRED of women. Not demeaning, not objectifying, hatred.]
The thing is, I think many of the views espoused by SJWs are actually harmful to women, by reinforcing the perception that women are inherently weaker than men, painting them as victims and at worse making them afraid of half the population. So if opposing SJWs makes me an anti-feminist, and that means fighting for female empowerment, then so be it.
I’m going to hit the specific issue of rape culture. People get angry about that, because they think “rape culture” means “I specifically condone rape.” It does not. Here’s rape culture in action:
http://theantimedia.org/child-used-bait-gets-raped-court-documents-show-schools-carelessness/
Specifically:
“Q. Do you believe she is somehow responsible for the injuries she sustained on that day?
A. I believe she took responsibility for herself when she went into that bathroom.”
Recap, if you don’t want to read the link: School officials use 14 year old girl in sting operation to trap boy committing sexual assaults. Teachers don’t come to rescue her. She’s raped. School administrators report “She took responsibility for herself.” School administrators previously reported to have said they couldn’t do anything about the child.
A child brings a toy gun to school, they call the cops. A 14 year old obeys teachers and gets anally raped? She “took responsibility for herself.”
That’s rape culture.
2). Everyone in this country claims to be against rape, but the kind of rape everyone visualizes is “A stranger attacks and brutally rapes a woman in a dark alley.” This is a distinct minority of all rape. Rapes are often committed by family members or loved ones. They occur in intimate settings.
When *this* definition of rape is considered, the Internet erupts in flames. Did she say no? Well she should’ve said “No,” harder. Did she get physical but eventually stop resisting? She should’ve resisted more. The intrinsic idea presented is that a woman must resist *enough* for a man to judge her resistance as valid, rather than simply saying: “I don’t want this.”
That assumption is rape culture in action. Refusal is not enough. Refusal must be adamant, repetitive, and possibly physically forceful.
3). We teach women “Here’s how not to get raped.” We don’t teach men “Don’t rape.” That’s rape culture. The problem is not that we teach women “Here’s how not to get raped,” the problem is that the “Don’t rape” argument is not taught with equal focus.
4). A grown man rapes a 14 year old girl. A judge in the case gives him a one month sentence and says “The victim seemed older than her biological age.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/30/justice/montana-rape-30-day-sentence/
5). Jameis Winston is accused of rape. His victim identifies him. Cops refuse to investigate. When they eventually take a DNA sample almost a year later, it’s found to match DNA from her underwear gathered at the time. No charges are filed. Winston goes on to win the Heisman. No serious criminal investigation is conducted.
That’s rape culture. That’s a judge saying “Oh, well, she was asking for it.”
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of similar examples easily available online. The point is, these are not cherry picked. These are literally just the most prominent and discussed examples from the past 12 months. They collectively speak to a *cultural* viewpoint in which women are forced to “prove” that they were raped. Discussions of the topic are hijacked by people screaming “What about FALSE RAPE ACCUSATIONS) (Always bad, never acceptable, but also a distinct minority of all rape charges according to every organization that’s ever checked, including the FBI itself) or “What about male rape!? (Always bad, never acceptable, deserves equal prosecution and attention) as though the reality of these two factors is ITSELF an excuse to dismiss female experiences and lives.
Now, maybe you read the list and think: “I believe everything you’ve said is reprehensible.” Fine. Good, in fact. Because *culture* isn’t personal. Examples:
I have lived in areas where there’s a hunting and gun-owning culture. I neither hunt nor own a gun. Those cultures still shaped the areas I lived in and in some cases, my views of gun ownership and hunting.
I have lived in Louisville KY, where horse racing is popular thanks to Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. I became more interested in horse racing, despite never going to the Derby itself. Why? Horse racing culture.
Being affected by rape culture does not mean you are a rapist. It does not mean you condone or approve of rape. It *does* mean that if you have been raped, as a male or a female, it will impact the way your experience is treated and received by your fellow Americans. It *does* mean that rape culture has shaped your views to the incidents described above, even if only to a small degree.
Once you dig deep enough, you discover that no, the school administrators, the judge, and the college investigators refusing to prosecute Winston are not anomalies. They’re typical. These events might be unusually shocking, but the patterns they describe are sadly common. That’s rape culture.
One clarifying point. When I say “Forced to prove they were raped,” I don’t mean “Forced to prove legally.”
I mean “Forced to prove to an army of disbelieving men that a sexual assault occurred and that a woman resisted *enough* for her rape to be judged as valid as opposed to simply being a “miscommunication.” And again, people tend to hijack this point saying “Well, hey, maybe the guy didn’t understand.” And sometimes that’s true. Sometimes that grey area really *does* exist.
The problem — the part where rape culture comes into it — is that you see this argument being applied to cases where a grown man raped a 14-year old girl and the judge says “Well, she was older than her biological age.’
Those are some shocking cases, byt there’s no evidence that they aren’t aberrations. The idea that you have to teach men not to rape is inherently offensive to men. And when does common sense become victim-blaming?
For example, if a man in a $5000 Armani suit was taking $500 out of an ATM in a crime-ridden area at night and he got mugged, and somebody said to him “maybe you shouldn’t have done that”, is that an example of “mugging culture”? Does that imply that people condone muggers? So why can’t somebody say for eg “maybe don’t walk around in skimpy clothes in dangerous areas” without it being “rape culture”?
Note, by my spelling you can probably tell I’m not American, so I’m willing to cede that there’s a chance that there is a “rape culture” there that there isn’t over here, but I’m doubtful.
I’m going to say that one of the ways I’m majorly out of step with liberal orthodoxy in general with the Rape Culture. I can sum it up as follows.
1) Sexual assault is always wrong. Even one rape is too many. We should be doing everything we can to stop it.
2) That being said, Sexual assault is WAY DOWN from where it was at its recent peak in 1993. This is according to RAINN, so its a credible feminist source. This huge victory is something that feminists should acknowledge more, because it makes them seem less credible when they try to scare the shit out of everyone when a cursory look at the stats actually show things are better than they’ve been in a long time.
3) The ironic thing is that, as sexual assault has gotten rarer, the problem is that that inherently makes people less likely to believe a woman who comes forward. So there’s real concern that trend will start to reverse itself.
4) All this being said, the USA does in fact have a worse rape problem than most developed countries. However, there are places where sexual assault is even worse: India, Anchorage Alaska (oddly), Central America and even the US Military have ‘rape cultures’ that far surpass the problems most americans will ever see.
5) There is a special place in hell for people who post or promote bogus rape stats, on either side. Understanding what’s really going on factually is really, really important to understanding the actual crux of the problem. Part of my problem with Sommers is that she’s been caught doing that a couple of times.
mi·sog·y·ny
məˈsäjənē
noun
dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.
The cries of misogyny don’t come in response to criticism: “I don’t agree with your ideas”. They come in response to attacks: “you should be raped to death, cunt”.
To the extent that “misogyny” is thrown around carelessly, “SJW” is thrown around equivalently carelessly.
I’m not the one doing that conflating. The people attacking DiGRA for being SJWs are.
Who is attacking DiGRA? We have a simple zero-tolerance policy just report it in the #GamerGate tag.
Every video/post I see on the topic says “Stay the hell away from DiGRA related personnel”.
Gamers are taking a look on academia with a focus on DiGRA culture, that is pretty similar to e.g. DiGRA taking a look on gaming culture with a focus on toxic culture.
We want to know about DiGRA and how it influences us as a culture and there is nothing wrong in that and since we can’t get journalists to do it then hell, we are going to do it ourselves.
//sarcasm begins:
You as a gamedev trained us in researching to find eastereggs. You’re perpetrating harassment in reallife towards DiGRA when you do games that encourage researching.
I heard that argument somewhere recently slightly different context 😉
I can’t respond to your previous comment (Grr) so I figured I’d do it here.
1). Agreed. And for both men and women.
2). I didn’t know this one, but I do believe it. Violent crime in general is way down from its peak in the 1970s. Lead poisoning has a strong correlation with this.
3). Agree, and also a concern.
4). Sure. I would agree that the term “rape culture” is deliberately loaded. Sometimes, maybe even too much so. The fact that we have, in my view, a cultural attitude that dismisses the idea of violence against women does not mean that other countries aren’t far worse or that other *parts* of our own country aren’t utterly terrible.
5). I agree. While stats on rape are incredibly difficult to accurately measure due to under-reporting, I believe any discussion of the data should draw on the best resources available and acknowledge that in many cases, even the best resources available are woefully short of the dataset we’d actually like.
I think there’s truth to the concept of rape culture, but I also think there are subtleties and nuance that are often lost on either the people who hear the term or the people who try to explain it. It’s not a *personal* term — and it doesn’t mean that any single individual is a barely controlled rapist, and it doesn’t mean that you, or I, or Dylan up above *approve* of rape.
Something I want to point out:
The crowd behind GamerGate is not one group of people, nor do they have one motive. Realizing this and acting accordingly is really important, for both sides of GG.
I believe there is a bunch of gamers participating in GG, who’s sole interest has been to say they want objective journalism on games, so they know which games to play. This mostly means game reviews, where it’s absolutely correct to demand that if the author and the developer have ties, these should be made public, as making purchase recommendations for games is not ethical if the writer has their own agenda.
If you are one of these gamers, note however that there’s a bunch of different mediums regarding games, not all of which is games reviews nor for gamers. The most targeted games sites during GG are meant for game developers and mostly about how games are developed, where authoring the stories would be impossible without knowing the devs, so there’s much less ethical issues with that side of games journalism.
Now where this gets really muddled is, there’s one or more groups of people participating in GG, who’s agenda is not about re-introducing ethics into games journalism, who are using the gamers coldly and cynically to drive their desire. These groups includes a bunch of people who clearly have pretty strong anti-feminist agenda.
Writeups, including this one, would benefit from making the distinction between these groups.
Having said that, the gamer group of GG would do well to clearly condemn the anti-feminist group, as in not doing so, they’re actively supporting a group who’s views I doubt everyone in GG supports and making the whole movement look like anti-feminisms is the driving force behind GG. Be clear in what you stand for.
First, there is no such thing as an “objective review”. All reviews are opinion pieces (unless you simply read off the price, publisher, and show a picture of the box).
Second, I would find it more believable that #GamerGate was worried about conflicts of interests in journalism if it were spending any time focusing on the payola issues in the streamer world.
But it isn’t. So far, as I can tell, for #GamerGate, *buying* a game from a developer is proof of conspiracy and a lack of ethics (see, also, Patreon), but directly taking money from the publisher to cover a game is not.
You may be interested in this parody site:
http://www.objectivegamereviews.com/deus-ex-human-revolution-review/
That parody site is my new favorite thing.
“Mass Effect 3 is the third game in the Mass Effect series. It is a science fiction third person shooter game. The player can enable or disable RPG elements in the menu. The game concludes the story of Commander Shepard, the player’s character, who fights against an invasion of Reapers, robotic invaders that wish to destroy all intelligent life in the galaxy by shooting them with lasers or turning them into robotic zombies or soup.”
Yes, truly objective game reviews. 🙂
One of my points about forming a consumer organization is that then opinions about the anti-feminist strains of the organization could then be cleanly embraced or repudiated. Assholes like the one I linked above clearly leave their stink all over the movement, to the degree that people who do embrace the better meaning parts of GG have their motives hidden.
I fail to see the distinction you’re trying to establish here. What is this Operation doing to DiGRA that you aren’t doing to Hoff Sommers? How are they ‘silence’ anybody?
If they’re going to interact with their opponents’ actual writings, they’re arguably doing more and better than you, because all I’ve seen you interact with is Hoff Sommers’ wikipedia article.
There is a difference between stating an opinion, and attempting to do academic reviews with a preset mental agenda, and to threaten to boycott or damage the careers of journalists and devs who attempt to use their learnings.
You could make an argument that the GG movement would actually be healthier if they would just say “this is all about our disagreement with feminism”, and drop the tacked-on corruption angle.
If they just said “feminists are wrong, here is why”, then we could have a reasonable discussion. When they go the next step to “feminists are conspiring against us with their nefarious corruptions! Uh, whoops, I mean, down with corrupt conspiracies!” then there is no way it ends well.
Slightly off topic (sorry Mr Schubert)
Concerning the Intel thing
Obviously anon source, so don’t believe it if you want.
But I can’t think of any way it is’nt plausible.
https://twitter.com/kenwongart/status/519137449449361408
https://twitter.com/kenwongart/status/519137491283361793
Also, I can’t stop but laugh at Gaters who think that other company will fall into the same trap Intel did. They continue writing emails, saying, “LOOK! Intel did it! You should too remove your support!!!”. Yeah right. As if any company would want to attract the media attention and the bad press Intel had last week. YEAH….
The best part of all this is that Mimi al-Laham (“Syrian Girl”) has adopted Gamergate. Because WHY NOT.
http://hubrisofboz.blogspot.com/2013/01/who-is-mimi-al-laham-syrian-girl.html
Social justice advocates and safe spaces silencing victims and abuse call outs are dangerous.
And excessively unreported on by sites that claim to support them.
I would like to note that the label “Social Justice Warrior” was actually an effort to distinguish a particularly virulent and intolerant variant of radical feminism from feminism in general, characterized by it’s persistent and aggressive misinterpretation of statements made by their opponents (generally people that are only slightly to the right of them, actual regressives are effectively immune to the shaming/isolation tactics they use by default).
Not that everyone using the term seems to get that, truly anti-feminist people of course use it do describe all of feminism. It also has the convenient effect that it often makes the actual Social Justice Warriors see red and start sputtering, and are thereby easily identified.
Anyway, yeah, if your theory is getting featured on InfoWars, you can pretty much take that as a sign that you have truly jumped the shark.
–Dave
I should note in my interview with Milo, he used the term ‘anti-feminist’ frequently. I don’t know if I succeeded, but I tried to focus on always using the term anti-SJW, so it was fascinating that that’s the angle he pushed. He also made it clear that that’s the more important half of the equation to him.
Yeah, Milo’s an “ally of convenience” for GG, he was brought into this because it was a chance to go after his normal enemies (liberals, especially feminists) on a new battleground.
Most of the moderates on the GG side seem to realize that Milo has his own agenda, but as he was the only “press” voice they had, they accept his baggage for now.
–Dave
The problem I’ve had with the term SJW as it is commonly used is that I have rarely seen it applied to anyone it *fit.*
I spent a few months hanging out on radfem websites once. I read a vicious attack on transpeople from an ideological direction I’d never even heard of before. I was curious. I went and had a look-see at the topics.
Number of radfem articles concerning video games = 0.
Number of radfems I saw discussing, interested in, or writing about video games = 0.
Things radfems talk about: The complete and utter pervasiveness and distortion of men and male “culture” into women’s lives at every level. The profound difficulty-to-impossibility of separating themselves from that. The colonization of women-born-women issues by transpeople. The nature (or the lie) of gender. The reality of sex as a biological identity and sex as a false sociological construct. The possibilities of commune living.
I am not claiming to speak for all radical feminists and I do not state the above as either condemnation or to invite snark — but the truly radical branch of feminism may critique mainstream culture from time to time (and gain some momentary exposure for doing so, as famously happened with Firefly a few years back), but it takes no great interest in video games. To the extent it *does* take an interest, it is to classify them as fundamental tools of perpetuating the same violence and degradation of women that the movement views as a transhistorical phenomenon that began long before recorded history and has continued, very nearly without interruption from then until now.
Just as the American “Left” is politically nothing more than “Barely left of center” in historical term, the feminists who are often termed radical are, in the eyes of the *actual* radicals, not feminists at all.
EDIT: The above should read “gender as a false sociological construct.”
First of all, disclaimer: I’m not part of any ‘gate. I’m just a rando nobody that has followed the subject of game criticism from a long time ago. Approximately how long ago? Probably since Brenda Romero had her emailing list about sex in videogames.
When the first recent woman-in-games incidents arose (the announcement of Anita’s KS, the declarations by Aris Bakhtanians, etc.). I tried to research about feminism. My source was Tumblr, and I concede the point that its not probably the best starting point for an investigation on the subject. However, at the moment was considered sort of the epicenter on it on the Internet. I browsed the #feminism tag, and soon realized that I could classify the posts and quotes found there in two broad categories.
Some of the posts were clever insights on the situation of Western society and gender, talking about topics like: Statements of agency from women (“my body, my rules”); explanations on how gender is not a binary but a continuum of identity; pleas for respect to sex workers, trans people, and marginalized minorities. I found those kind of posts very enlightening, and mostly agree with them. The world has still a long way to walk to achieve equality between genders, and I think heartily that such equality is a totally desirable goal, worth to fight for.
However, I also found many posts and quotes (many from prominent and respected feminist thinkers like Andrea Dworkin) that were unequivocally hateful. Not anger at an unequal society or at privileges got unfairly by men, but hatred at men for being men, with a good dose of just plainly outrageous ideas. Like the reaction of feminists to the Bobitt incident (Are you really happy because of a mutilation?), some quotes by Andrea Dworkin (“I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.”), Catharine Comins (“Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience.”), Marilyn French (“All men are rapists and that’s all they are”), Catherine McKinnon (“All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.”), Eve Ensler (In her critically acclaimed “The Vagina Monologues”, a woman survivor of statutory rape praises her female attacker). And others. Then I understood that feminism is not an homogeneous force, but composed of many different feminisms that range from the strife for equality to the absolute hatred of men and everything masculinity means.
Those latter ‘hatred-feminists’ hijacked the strife for equality (that in my view, is a strife in which every good person should take part), trying to convert it into a war against men. That is probably why feminism has a serious PR problem right now, and the reason why many people don’t like the label of ‘feminist’. Worst even, those who spill hatred aren’t just fringe voices in the outside of feminism, but respected leaders of the movement.
That hatred-feminism is the feminism many gamers don’t want to take over. Because in a world whose gender roles are in redefinition (And I think that is good and a needed part of the strife), and hit by economic crisis, playing a good game is a small wonder that doesn’t cost too much and lightens our hearts a lot. To be able to lose yourself in other world and forget momentarily the issues with the real one is a blessing that we don’t want to be hijacked by people of the hatred-feminism current. As some critics have said, gaming is part of our private garden. We don’t want hatemongers on it. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t believe or help with the equality strife.
I can feel when reading an article on women in gaming if who wrote it was from the Equality current of from the Hatred current. All my repect, love and admiration for those that stay in Equality.
That is the reason I left the ‘gate. Jenn Frank was from the Equality current. She shouldn’t have been the target of an anti-hatred-feminism movement. Not at all. With some understanding and love, she would have stood for us gamers. Liana also stood for gamers and against hatred-feminists. They never should have been touched by the raging sea. I understand the reasons behind the anti-feminism in the ‘gate. I feel the same way. But as I see things now, women hit by the harassers and online sociopaths are at risk to join the files of hatred-feminists. Hate groups tend to recruit people in distress.
Will we let them?
First of all, you’re right. Feminism is a complex, nuanced topic. The problem is, people who want to dismiss it often take the *most* radical view they can find and project that view on to feminism as a whole.
This problem is not unique to feminism. People who want to dismiss Christianity as a hateful, evil, and destructive force can find plenty of ammunition in the words of right wing preachers, the Westboro Baptist Church, and the historical actions of some leaders. People who want to damn all of Islam can use Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. Christians who want to attack atheism as immoral and deeply evil need look no further than Stalin and Mao.
Point #1: Every large social or religious movement in history has an ideological fringe, an ideological center, and all points in between. Cherry-picking from the fringe to damn the whole is a common tactic used as an excuse to avoid engaging with any valid points the other side might have. This *includes* the people associated with GG, which is one of Damion’s points.
Point #2: Of the specific feminists you name:
Andrea Dworkin: While highly influential in Second Wave feminism, was unquestionably a radical lesbian feminist. Third Wave feminists disagree with her on multiple topics, which it itself part of a split within the community. The specific quote you reference is from a NOVEL, not the nonfiction writings of the author. While it may reflect her real-life opinions to some degree, plenty of men have written novels detailing the brutal rape, murder, or enslavement of other men and women without being called to task for the actions of their fiction.
Marilyn French: The quote you attribute to French is, again, actually a quote from a character in a NOVEL she wrote. French herself took no such position.
Catherine Comins: Paywalled at Time. Can’t comment on this one.
Catharine McKinnon: Did not say this. Snopes.com debunks it, beginning with the simplified form of the quote “All sex is rape” and ending with the more sophisticated version as written by Cal Thomas.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp
Eve Ensler: I cannot speak to TVM, having never seen it, but I would like to note that there’s a substantial body of work *criticizing* TVM from within feminism itself. Wikipedia has some details on this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues#Criticism_from_feminists
Point #3: Always Check Sources
Of the five women you specifically cite, three of the quotes are either misattributed or untrue. Two of the women in question are considered radical activists.
I am not trying to call you out or embarrass you, because clearly you’ve put a great deal of thought into this topic. Take it one step further: What does it say about the sources you consulted that none of them bothered to find out whether or not the information they were imparting was actually accurate?
I will note that there are definitely nutball feminists out there. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the ‘all penetration is rape’ section of the internet, and just reading the posts there cost me IQ points.
But my point is that, even as strong a feminist as Anita is, she doesn’t even come CLOSE to the level of crazy that M’s 5 crazy examples purported to have said (and which you dispute). Which is to say, Anita is nowhere NEAR insane extremist level feminist. Even if you assume that there is a hatred-bearing level of SJW in the feminist movement, she’s a long way from that.
As for your other five examples, feminist critique of plays, books and movies have existed for decades, and yet the SJW-movement has made no particular inroads for any sort of mainstream movies or films. Hell, even the stuff you watch on Lifetime is light years away from the crazy feminism described here.
Well, right — and that’s my whole point. AS and the other feminist critiques of gaming to date are mild. They’re mainstream to everyone *except* a certain stripe of GG supporter who is encountering the idea that not everyone is a straight, white, heterosexual male for the first time and is enraged at that idea.
While it wasn’t explicitly GG-related, I remember reading an infamous post on Bioware (I think) boards from someone who was furious about the possibility of gay romance in his RPGs (I believe this involved Dragon Age 2, though that could be a misrememberance).
This person couldn’t believe that Bioware was pandering to minorities by including optional romance options for people who weren’t straight men (or women as an afterthought).
Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women is a lightning bug against a lightning bolt when compared to the writings of radical women who believe that men have created systems that destroyed the lives of women for as long as humans have existed. And that’s where the real radical fringe is.