This blog is for people who have read into the Zoe Quinn situation, who know where to find the real information (hmm, for some reason, Polygon doesn’t have an article up yet…), and who might be amenable to the idea of listening to a feminist.

But it’s also for all gamers.

I want to talk to gamers about feminism. Anita You-know-who often fails at her task, because she wants to talk to feminists about games. She preaches to a choir.

I am not preaching to a choir. So, maybe, no one will want to listen to me. But I think you will, because real feminism makes real sense and it can make real good games.

Harassing any woman for her sex life is bad for all women. This is bad for feminism.

Defending the men of Kotaku, who use sexual politics as a gatekeeper, is bad for all women (especially those in game dev). This is bad for feminism.

Suppressing information that would reveal these people for who they are? Silencing anyone who speaks out against it? Cherrypicking quotes and evidence from only men on social media; ignoring or blocking all women on Twitter, in your feed, and otherwise; and claiming that this silencing of women is somehow feminist?

If that’s you, congrats. You’re not just bad for feminism. You’re bad for game design. Your bad for the industry. You’re bad for whatever cause you claim to promote.

And, lastly, you’re a card-carrying member of the patriarchy—the group of people who restrict the gender roles available to everyone. These restrictions suck, whether you are a man or a woman or don’t identify; but enforcing people to these gender roles gives men a definite advantage. Yup—it’s a negative sum situation. Everyone loses. “But if you can end up with the slightly higher negative score, why not?” declares the patriarch.

A little bit about the patriarchy (a primer for the initiate to reasonable-yet-radical feminism, don’t leave yet because this shit gets good):

I hate to start this rant by mentioning the term “patriarchy”, because it turns non-feminists away from the ideas we care to promote, by employing an academic term. There’s nothing that excludes people from a conversation faster than using a limited lexicon of highly-specialized terms; tumblr is, in fact, legendary for that. But this term becomes vital for the remainder of my rant, in explaining why the patriarch broke gaming journalism and feminism can fix it.

The patriarchy thrives on making people believe that gender is a zero sum game. That when one person wins, another person loses. Here are the rules to this game: For women to succeed, men have to fail; so men use their power to prevent women from succeeding. And when men gain something, women must lose something of equal value; so women should keep men from succeeding—a quite difficult task, because society has greatly curtailed their agency. The war that gets fought on the front lines of this supposedly “zero sum” battlefield? Slut shame the women! Virgin shame the men! Reinforce what everyone already thinks about the sexual economy! That solves the problem, in the eyes of the masses who have adopted the narrative of the patriarchy. They spread this shame, and some of them willingly call themselves “feminists” in so doing. Others call themselves “men’s rights activists”. Neither group improves the perception of gender and may well be using those labels improperly.

As you can see, the rules are shit. In truth, things can get better for everyone. It’s not a competition to get the gender highscore. Women benefit more from the fight against patriarchy than do men, but everyone benefits! The patriarchs oppose us in our efforts to improve the perception of both genders: Which would provide all people with the same amount of agency. And it’s not all about “rights”. I absolutely agree that men’s rights (say, not to go to war and to keep their genitalia) and women’s rights (say, reproductive rights and topfreedom) are in peril. But it’s also about agency and the perception of agency. The reason women are much more likely to be sexual assault victims is because they are perceived as having no agency, and are expected to defer to the decisions of men in sexual matters. The reason men are much more likely to be murder victims is because everyone assumes men have agency to protect themselves at all times; that they have too much agency to ever be a victim. This shit is 100% false.

Outsiders hear the word “patriarchy” and they flip shit, thinking feminists believe in a secret man-only cabal hiding in the Eye of Providence and blanketing the countryside with femtrails to keep the ladies sedate. The patriarchy is more insidious, significantly and paradoxically more visible, and anyone can join!

To sum up: Patriarchy is a system run (principally) by men to make gender a problem (principally) for women, and everybody is getting shafted by the deal.

So why do I do a give an explanation on the patriarchy in this rant about the game industry? Well, the gaming industry includes more than its fair share of patriarchs. And these gaming patriarchs are more than willing to welcome any members who promote their message, protect their leadership, and satisfy the conditions of being in the elite. The most obvious patriarchs openly support games where the dude protagonist and three other dudes meet and murder 28,000 other (expendably male) dudes, meet and rescue 3 (powerlessly female) women, witness the anger-inducing victimhood of 7 more women, and fawn over a tantalizing (but still fairly-reliant) femme fatale.

In the case of these game developers, the patriarchs’ message makes it pretty obvious which side they’re on. They perpetuate a model for how gender roles must be enforced.

On indie game devs and their patriarchy:

This is where you shout: “But not indie games! (#NotAllDevs) They include a diverse cast. They’re more willing to discuss matters of sexuality and victimhood with realism and delicacy. They deliver a great message. The people who make indie games can’t be part of the patriarchy!”

That’s where you’re wrong. The patriarchy is only part message. The rest is action. This action promotes policies and behaviors that disenfranchise women, empower men, and control the gender choices of both. The indie gaming scene is as prone to becoming a patriarchy as any other. Its members start to collude, control the means of discourse, and exchange resources and favors and friendships for personal gain. It creates nepotism and cronyism.

These collusions and resource allocations occur within an environment of sexual politics. In that system of sexual politics, women get objectified and subsequently economized into things that the men can exchange. Of course, this obnoxiousness occurs in most industries. But here’s the rub: The indie scene is very fresh.

Mature industries create policies that attempt to prevent sexism and nepotism. Because of the freshness of indie gaming, it has not yet protected itself against this action. Maleness and femaleness quickly gained definition in the indie scene, became commoditized, and the patriarchy crystallized.

In the indie dev scene, the patriarchs have found a great way to cover up their usage of this sexual economy. They must deliver a consistent, positive message to others about gender. If the message looks good enough, no one will investigate the means of its delivery. So, step one: Look good to the public.

Step two: Monopolize on women, as a resource to the patriarchs. After all, these patriarchs have to hire women (often to their dismay). They may as well obtain value from them. Instead of figuring out the great value these women possess, such as their creativity, coding skills, and artistic proficiency, they take advantage of one resource they believe women actually have: Victimhood and a lack of agency.

They transform women creatives into the celebrity spokespeople for their organizations, as a means of safeguarding themselves against the public in case things go wrong. That same “women-as-a-victim” tropey bullshit we all hate when it happens in a video game? The patriarchs in the indie dev scene do it in real life, with real women instead of high-poly models, and they routinely get away with it. When the men involved get exposed for their sexual politicking, they can throw the spokeswoman to the vultures (read: Internet trolls and misogynists) and run for safety.

Why? It’s all to gain the support of other men, outside of the industry, who engage in the patriarchy. These patriarch gamers see a victimized woman, and become the gun-toting, catchphrasing, balls-to-the-wall heroes of their video game worlds. Are you a bad enough dude to use your maleness to save her! “In the name of feminism, we must march to rescue a damsel in distress who we believe has no agency!”

Please note the inconsistency in their perception that women have no agency, friendo. This perception is a product of, yup, the patriarchy—getting tired of my lazy ass using that word yet? Feminists do not see women as devoid of agency; so these men are not feminists!

Many of these saviors (often SJWs, if you’re into that wankery) believe in the narrative of the patriarchy. They believe that men have all the resources and power; and women can only obtain resources and power through them. So they give their resources to these women, ostensibly, to protect and rescue them! But even their flawed attempt at joining the patriarchal ranks fails, as these resources ultimately make their way to the top. The spokeswoman’s patriarch handlers line their pockets with cash and bathe in goodwill at the expense of a human being who should’ve been more than a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

On Kotaku’s involvement, how it all relates to Zoe Quinn, and the gaming patriarchy’s “lines of defense”:

Kotaku’s articles and interviews would have us believe they are the pinnacle of true feminism, in a shining sea of inequality and filth. They’ve taken care of the message and often it looks true to form. I’ve actually likes some of what they’ve had to say on the topic of equality in gaming. Usually, though, it’s not even a real message of feminism. It’s just the most centrist and inoffensive position to hold in modern America. It provides everyone their feel-goods and steps on no male toes.

But what’s behind the messages? Who are the people in the top positions at Kotaku controlling these messages? They are almost entirely men. Look it up, check it out, see who’s among the patriarchy in the indie dev scene. Dig deep, look for names and faces, people exchanging with people, trading favors and sex and friendship for resources (not just for fun). These patriarchs use feminism—often real, cool, positive feminism!—as their first line of defense.

The second line of defense here is Zoe Quinn, a lady with a made-up moniker who came from money but genuinely enjoys video games. That’s really all Zoe Quinn should’ve ever been; a person who loves games and excels at things she’s good at, and fails at things she’s bad at. But they turned her into a celebrity, a face of their culture, and derived value directly from her femaleness instead of her skills.

Honestly, that’s all the defense the indie dev scene would need, if they could keep their business relationships businessy. But they couldn’t. They’ve already economized sexuality and deemed some of their organization’s women as sexual resources. To them, sex is business! It’s something they can use, if they need it, and trade other resources for. But they slipped up, and got exposed having sex with one of their key lines of defense: Zoe Quinn. With gamers undistracted by the pro-feminist articles, their internal structure is left bare for all to see.

Now, who or what do they have to fall back on? They could spam LGBTQ support on the front page to defend themselves, but someone has already opened the jar of culture jam!

Well, now, you’re seeing their last line of defense. It involves contacting the other industry leaders—again, mostly dudes—to cover their asses. It involves never reporting the story or its details, so that all the sources remain vague and implausible to the uninformed. It involves Joshua “MIA since Day One” Boggs and Nathan Grayson escaping unharmed, while Zoe Quinn gets sacrificed to the Internet slaughter. The usual misogynist swarm shows up and—thankfully for NATHAN GRAYSON and JOSHUA “MARRIED MAN” BOGGS—all the claims against them can be excused as the appropriate feminist response to idiot men.

Zoe Quinn offered to help in her own defense, making herself a more “suitable victim” (yuck), but to little avail. Among countless other screw ups: Her supposed dox, with numbers she confirmed to be real, actually provided numbers to people who had nothing to do with her (or anybody). Even so, her defenders were so eager to assist her that they spent zero time investigating the claims and confirmed the dox anyway! (I’m looking at you, fellow fem and person I usually admire, Fruszina Eordogh!)

She dug the hole deeper and deeper, trying to complete the androcentric idea of “women weak, victims, powerless, need help from men!” Each time, she failed to impress. The SJWs swept in to gain some patriarchal power points by defending her each step of the way, but they didn’t get too far either. The cover-ups and conspiratorial nature of her actions made matters worse, and she wound up with a bigger misogynists-versus-SJW battle at her doorstep.

Worse yet, she called for help on Patreon to financially support her, during a time when she’s not producing a product, demonstrating a skill, or showing her value as a person. Men were giving her money only for her femaleness in a situation engineered to make her appear more “female” to these patriarchs–by being a victim. A most obvious and direct display of anti-feminist patriarch-enabling idiocy, decked out in a pinstripe “Nice Guy” suit jacket.

The whole thing became a mess.

In days to come, the indie dev cabal will willingly bail on Zoe Quinn, when she has become more of a liability than an asset to them. Right now, they can still get some mileage out of the situation. Their allies in the industry, including the well-funded folks of Gawker media whose bank accounts are stuffed with Fortune 500 companies’ sound investments, can also use Zoe to misdirect some of the criticism directed at them. By now you’ve noticed a pattern of what’s happening here: Zoe Quinn is getting used. Zoe Quinn is an actual person who stumbled into an industry, became a celebrity social construct for the patriarchs, and believes in what she’s doing enough that she puts up with it all.

On the unfortunate necessity of it all:

Here’s the sad, dumb truth. Even in 2014, there had to be a woman getting used this way, in order to bring any of this corruption to light. This woman had to have sex, not just quietly exchange money for press like everyone else in the industry. This swarm of idiot misogynists had to appear, to provide negative attention to the issue and blow it up.

The patriarchy has created a system that only solves itself—only reveals its inner demons and patterns of sexual economy—when misogynists show up.

These misogynists are part of the patriarchy too, and often lack the access to resources that connote maleness (wealth, sexual agency). They believe strongly in their assigned gender role, but express rage that they cannot fulfill it. But instead of campaigning against the patriarchy that fixes them to an unrealistic standard of maleness, they attempt to control women in the most aggressive manner possible.

Then comes their opposition.

“Social Justice Warriors” are the natural result of a patriarchy that co-opts the term “feminism” as a resource for maleness. They can use the term “feminism”, all the while considering women as victims, lacking in agency, and needing of their resources. While misogynists succeed in the patriarchy by making femaleness cheaper, SJWs succeed in the patriarchy by amassing the new currency for maleness. They use this resource like any good patriarch would: to obtain or control women.

The indie devs offered up a woman to the chaos, and the masses claimed that any and all subsequent backlash against them was misogyny. The voices of women and men who want to end sexual politics in the gaming industry? Silenced, by the noise of the crowd.

It should not have had to come to this. But it did. Because men still run the show, men control the message, and the message is sometimes “feminism”. It’s a message that can provide them great power, while keeping their nepotistic “old boys’ club” at the tippy-top of the tower.

More on the co-opting of feminist terminology by the patriarchy, and a lil’ jabbing at Fruszina:

The faux-feminist hand-waving of this incident is an instrument of the patriarchy. It’s essentially the oldest trick in their book, repurposed for 2014. It takes a sexual economy—where men in power use women’s sexuality to decide who succeeds and who fails–and proclaims that it’s “just men acting like dumb men” or “just women acting like dumb women” to reinforce the concept of their gender roles. (In the case of KC Vidya Rants, VICE’s own Fruszina Eordogh couldn’t even decide whether she was silencing a man or a woman; and didn’t do the requisite fact-finding before she assigned KC a gender. Sheesh!)

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/zoe-quinn-slut-shaming-the-feminist-conspiracy-and-depression-quest

Writers like her are either sexists, or are unwittingly supporting the patriarchs by demonstrating only the male voice. They only quote and republish information given to them by men. If the information is not from men, they may even stoop to re-gendering the people they quote to provide more weight to their statements. Why? Because if a man supports them and they name their message “feminism”, it’s seen as having more influence: “He’s a man who has chosen to ally with us, even though we’re feminists!”

And if a woman opposes their efforts, there’s a chance she will reveal that the writers are not feminists at all or diminish the writers’ opinions. So what do they do to these women? They never publish them, don’t talk about them, don’t share their stories, and pretend they don’t exist. In this case, the concept and semantics (but not the real practice) of feminism provides more power to the writer.

To pull it all together here: They share only stories of the men who are misogynists, to demonstrate the existence of their foes. And they only share the stories of men who are allies, to suggest the diversity of their cause. Lots and lots and lots of male voices. In the name of so-called “feminism”, the women must be silenced.

This narrative likewise promotes the idea that gamers are men, and “gamerness” is “maleness”. Well, that’s not the case. But if you only listen to and promote the voices of the 52% of gamers who are men, you’ll always come to that conclusion.

This is not the feminism I grew up with. It’s not the feminism that bell hooks wrote about. Feminists supports the voices of women, even if they don’t necessarily like what they have to say.

The patriarchy knows that “feminism” is a word of power. The word has the ability to make people undertake certain actions. The people in control wield words of power against people they suppress. So, of course, the patriarch will employ power-words, such as “feminism” and sometimes “misogyny” and even “patriarch” (MAYBE I AM AGAINST YOU???), to weaken their chosen opponents. As the expected gender roles evolve, these words gain new purposes. It’s how they are used that is the problem. The word feminism should be used in defiance of the enforcement of gender roles and for the promotion of women’s voices. That’s what all of this is about.

On the collusion, the nepotism, the incest, and whatever else you wanna call corruption:

Duh, it’s real. Why not be a gaming journalist with a high level of transparency, to end the corruption and the patriarchal wheelin’-and-dealin’? There are great game journalists out there who are picking up steam in the wake of all this. With a little openness and investigative reporting, you could be among their ranks.

But indulge this metaphor with me, if you would:

Imagine if EA started calling all of its workers “indie devs”, and re-branded themselves as a gaming news website. They do all the same shit as before. They organize events, connect development teams with other teams, they handle the press, and they market their games. But they do all of these things under the pretense that “Electronic Arts provides unbiased, up-to-the-minute news on the indie game scene!” Someone, somewhere would hopefully call bullshit. This is the time to call bullshit.

Kotaku and Polygon have their fingers in many pies. At some level of comradery, reciprocal funding, and promotion, they are no longer gaming media sites. They are game producers. Their “indie devs” are not independent, they are reliant. It’s not an insult! We all rely on one another, to some extent, to get work done. The problem is that they are hiding their reliance to gain the benefit of appearing independent. They are using “indie” as a power-word to control their image, while reaping the benefits of being in a close-knit industry.

They are sponsored by journalists, who would have preferred jobs in production. They are promoted by journalists, who would have preferred jobs in advertising. Journalists are the “bosses” of these indie devs. In an ordinary business, if a boss has sex with a coworker, it is extremely suspect. Dudes should be getting investigated by HR teams, getting fired, and learning that sex is not a business and sex is not currency. However, through a technicality in how they do business, they can get away with this sort of abuse.

At this point, Nintendo Power—for fuck’s sake—has given less biased reviews to Nintendo games than Kotaku gives to the “independent developers" they helped fund. The problem is real. Zoe Quinn is being instructed to joke about it, to defer the issue onto fools who use the inflammatory term SJW to make points (including myself!), and distract from the corruption. She has no doubt been contacted by higher-ups (again, all dudes) in Kotaku, Polygon, the indie dev scene, and so forth; they have told her which actions to undertake to save their own asses and maintain Zoe as an asset.

Zoe is complicit in all this, because some part of her still loves being in game dev so much that she is willing to play into the patriarchy to do so. Maybe she doesn’t know the power structure she’s helping support, maybe she doesn’t care, maybe she thinks she has to.

Me? I want the truth to come out about all of this. I want Zoe—nay, Chelsea Van Valkenburg—to wait this out and then resign as a celebrity. And re-enlist as a gamer.

On the catch-22 of journalistic whistleblowing:

When it’s time to be a whistleblower, people will demand proof. It only makes sense. When no notable media sources provide this proof, the Internet’s fifth estate will snap to action and investigate for themselves. The investigation is hard, and it takes time. The proof comes in the form of links and images and text. As a result, people often have these reactions: “Could’ve been fake”, “Looks sketchy”, “I meant from a real source!” This is the fundamental problem with whistleblowing in the journalism industry. The journalists themselves have cornered the market on “legitimate sources” and “trustworthiness”. So when some Internet nobody rushes in to oppose them, their proof is never good enough.

If the “most trusted source” should happen to screw up, you’ll need to provide trustworthy proof of the incident. But if that proof doesn’t come from the “most trusted source”, who’s gonna believe it? That’s the catch-22 of journalistic whistleblowing. That’s why this has been an uphill battle for the people trying to indict Kotaku—a once beloved site—for its corruption.

That’s what’s so frustrating about all of this. We loved Kotaku, and Polygon, and VICE, and their “independent voices” in this otherwise-unbearable media environment. We came to trust them, and that trust doesn’t come easy. Only after we came to trust them did we read their articles faithfully, view their links as legitimate, and accept their messages as truth.

The people supporting the indie devs in this battle will look at a single piece of evidence and say: “Fake!” Those who stick around to look at a few more pieces of evidence say: “Well… they definitely could have altered these.” When hundreds of pieces of evidence from different sources and sites, from different people with different opinions, and from Zoe herself are gathered; dismissing the evidence as “fake” requires a whole new kind of zeal. The kind of zeal that a Flat Earther employs when he takes a plane ride from Australia to Argentina. The kind of zeal David Icke uses when he browses pictures of politicians looking for lizard eyes. For this news to be fake, you’d have to believe that a grand amount of evidence has been fabricated by many, many different people.

Such is the power of 4chan? If the “Osama bin Laden” theory for September 11th doesn’t suit you, maybe it was /v/? Certainly a possibility.

Final note:

Someone needs to Alex DeLarge these people into a chair, and have them listen to Andrea Dworkin’s entire bibliography on audiotape. It’ll teach them something about the economy of sexuality and the patriarchy’s means of control. After that, let them get back to their jobs. Their new jobs, that is, in an industry that doesn’t subornate perjury from reporters who probably wanted to unbiasedly review games instead of act as the marketing wing of a completely different industry.