Every time an industry dominated by one gender starts to become more diverse, the transition period is bumpy. Female politicians were dismissed by their opponents, women soldiers had to fight for their right to fight, and male flight attendants were ridiculed for their passion for infuriatingly tiny peanut bags. Now the video game industry is going through that same rough transition, so we spoke to a few women in the industry about it: Brianna Wu and Amanda Warner of indie game developer Giant Spacekat, game journalist Katie Williams, and another journalist who shall go unnamed for now, presumably because she understands how dumb the Internet can be about this stuff.

5 My God, The Harassment Is Coming From Inside The Industry!

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Brianna wrote an article for Polygon about the anonymous harassment of women in the industry. So of course she got a lot of anonymous harassment for it, because irony is a complicated concept, but being shitty is pretty basic. Since we talked to her, it's only gotten worse, and death threats containing her home address have come pouring in. If you're a woman in the game industry and you're vocal about wanting to be treated like a human being, hate mail is just another part of your day. That constant stream of abuse can pour over into your friendships, marriage, and professional life, because negativity is a liquid, and it always settles at the bottom. And trust us, you don't want that shit all up in your soul: It tastes of old hot dog water and partially digested Jagermeister.

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The best souls taste like cotton candy and rainbows.

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Every woman we talked to has encountered the attitude "You just need to suck it up and be strong." But, as Katie points out, that's putting the onus on the wrong person.

"I see that as kind of victim-blaming. It's not other people's fault for being terrible human beings; it's your fault for not being able to deal with it. There's something wrong with you, not them. And that's a really sad attitude for people to have to put up with. But it's quite common. I think every woman in the industry knows it, whether they admit it or not."

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"Honestly, have you considered Steve, Chris, Frank from accounting, and Chad's feelings

at all during this? Sounds like you're being a bit self-centered."

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If you're a woman, you're not allowed to have an emotional reaction to threats that would obviously provoke an emotional reaction in anyone. At least, not without being accused of hysteria. Then you're just a crazy chick taking mean words on the Internet too seriously, and your problem isn't real anymore. That's an awful phenomenon, but it's almost expected at this point: If there's one thing the Internet is good at, it's pornography. If there are two things, it's porn and anonymous dickotry. What really gets you is the harassment that comes from within the industry, and you don't even have to be vocal to encounter it. Amanda ran into an old acquaintance that was looking to get into game development, so she gave him her contact information. She received an email with all the usual professional niceties, but also this gem: