My thoughts on Arthur Chu, Alisha Grauso, & #GamerGate smearing

For months, every morning, I have to begin the same masochistic ritual of going on the #GamerGate feed and watch what deplorable act of hatred I, along with everyone else in GamerGate, is accused of doing. There is never really evidence of it, but speculation because GamerGate is a bunch of "cis white right-sing male misogynists" who therefore must support the things Brianna Wu or Srhbutts claims. I desperately have searched for this "GamerGater" who is a racist misogynist, but I never find him (I see trolls with 0 followers who made a twitter account that day). Instead I always interact with people who I now deemed friends, comrades-in-arms, who have endured the projection of society's ills on us.



Deep in my heart, I have grown to despise people like Arthur Chu who reflect the mindset of people trying to strip me of my humanity. In good faith, we have approached people to support a charity for a rape victim, not for PR(which is absurd considering the media continues to slam us) but for the sake of doing what is right. However, even the slightest possibility that people in GamerGate want to do good conflicts with the hateful image that they have engrained in their minds, which lead them to assume we have something to gain even with the smallest expression of sympathy.



For being so-called intellectuals engaged with postmodern philosophy, it is mind-boggling how they rationalize GamerGate in such absolute binary thinking. "GamerGate is evil! They are weaponizing charity." Very rarely does anyone ever approach me as an individual without pre-conceived hateful notions of me just for supporting GamerGate. Just expressing the thought of criticism to Anita Sarkessian, for example, is now synonymous with a statement of hate to these people. I am even still trying to understand the leaps of logic it takes to say members #NotYourShield are people wanting to be dominated by white men for simply disagreeing with Arthur Chu.

I told my friends IRL about this whole controversy, who ended up agreeing with me about GamerGate, yet I told them I wouldn't blame them for not participating. It takes some kind of courage to endure this unfounded hatred and to continue to tweet about GamerGate when, some days, it seems like they want your blood.



This unfounded hatred leads to a malicious hit piece like the one by Alisha Grauso. I feel like the smears these people try to launch at us is on a roulette wheel. It began with misogyny, then transphobia, and then morphed into defenders of Child porn. But Alisha wanted to be original, she wanted that article Brianna Wu, Arthur Chu, Chris Kluwe and others would promote by saying we were encouraging LGBT suicides by jamming phone lines. I want to laugh at this considering the high number of such people in GamerGate, but it is disheartening the levels of monstrosity these people think my friends and I are capable of just for calling for journalistic reform and artistic freedom.



When Alisha couldn't deny that one part of her article was clearly unfounded, she had to apologize and edit the article; however, this was just putting a bandaid over a small cut when this article stabbed us multiple times without evidence. What upsets me more is that she expects GamerGate to be grateful for this one edit when she smeared thousands of people, yet she is surprised at the amount of tweets she receives (some legitimate criticism, some vitriol, both very justified).



Despite this, GamerGate, we are stronger than these people. We have made it this far. These people will be consumed by their own unfounded hatred. If we continue to focus on what is truly relevant, these moral crusaders shall fail because like crusaders, their obsessive ideology will destroy them thinking that their views on "social justice" is an indulgence for their sins.



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