It’s been over a year since Gamergate brought online misogyny to the forefront of the national conversation on women and gaming and, while mainstream circles have moved on to the next controversy and news story, women online and in the gaming industry have continued their work – and continued dealing with a regular influx of abuse and threats.
But when I asked Anita Sarkeesian – the Feminist Frequency executive director whose events have been threatened with a mass shooting and a bomb scare – about the way that Gamergate seems to have faded a bit from public discourse, she noted that “just because the media isn’t talking about it, doesn’t mean online harassment is slowing down”.
Gamergate reminded people that they’re still active this week, even though they’ve been widely discredited: on Monday, the popular tech conference SXSW Interactive announced that they were canceling a panel on gaming and harassment unrelated to Gamergate, as well as a panel made up of Gamergate participants, because of online threats against the conference. Essentially, organizers determined that there wouldn’t be a conversation about harassment because of ... harassment.
After the backlash, organizers reportedly offered to reinstate at least the anti-harassment panel; the original panelists had, as of Tuesday night, not decided whether to still appear.
By initially canceling the events, SXSW Interactive director Hugh Forrest sent a rather limp message (which Chris Kluwe essentially called an act of “cowardice”) to those sending threats that abusive tactics work – and that there was no need to maintain the “civil and respectful dialogue” that he believes defines his conference. By making event organizers fearful for their safety and the safety of attendees, online abusers can, at least at first, achieve their goal of shutting women up, even when the women won’t acquiesce on their own.
For some feminists, the major problem with SXSW’s original response is not just the canceled talks, but that organizers framed the issue as a debate – as if threats of violence and ongoing harassment were a simple disagreement in which both sides were throwing rhetorical punches.
Brianna Wu, head of development at game company Giant Spacekat and a frequent target of online threats told me, “When you have women being criminally harassed and threatened on one side, the people doing the harassment on the other and men sitting in the middle feeling they are independent arbiters, this is an equation women will lose in every time.”
Sarkeesian, meanwhile, tweeted that “SXSW’s ‘both sides’ rhetoric is merely the status quo of a tech industry largely ignoring systemic online harassment.”
But it’s not just feminists who were concerned: in response to SXSW’s decision, Buzzfeed threatened to pull their participation, noting that the women who deal with harassment often do their work despite being threatened, and that the conference should “find a way to do what those other targets of harassment do every day - to carry on important conversations in the face of harassment.”
Vox Media followed suit. And on Tuesday afternoon, Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts sent Forrest a letter, noting that “by canceling the event, SXSW has assisted those who wish to silence women by threatening violence.” (Sources now tell Re/code that Buzzfeed and Vox have been invited to contribute to an all-day event on harassment that SXSW is contemplating adding as a result of the controversy.)
Part of the reason panels at places like SXSW are so important is that they put women’s stories and experiences out there – again and again – to try to change not only the harassment, but the climate that allows it to flourish.
“We need to challenge the idea that online harassment isn’t real, that online hate isn’t potent and dangerous,” Sarkeesian said.
What that change looks like, though, is still up in the air. Wu told me that “the only way to help the public is to keep talking about it”. Sarkeesian said we need to keep putting pressure on social media and tech companies “to rethink their systems and devise solutions that will actively deter harassment.”
Meanwhile, Latoya Peterson, an editor-at-large at Fusion and the creator of the Girl Gamers video series, believes that improving the climate for women and gaming also has to come by looking beyond the threats of harassment and at the reason why women want to be involved in gaming in the first place. One of the reasons she started her series, she said, was that she “was tired of the lives of women in games being reduced to a single narrative of harassment”.
“I’ve been gaming for years and it’s generally been a fun and engaging place. Gamers are always playing with possibilities, reinventing the past and shaping the future”, she told me.
Perhaps soon we can imagine a future that is a bit brighter for everyone. That used to be – ostensibly anyway – was SXSW Interactive was about.
- This article was amended on 27 October 2015 to reflect the fact that a quote originally attributed to Brianna Wu was actually provided by Anita Sarkeesian.