Anita Sarkeesian (@femfreq) and Zoe Quinn (@UnBurntWitch) testify at the U.N.

“Zoe Quinn” was Patient Zero of the #GamerGate controversy. A tattoo-covered, mentally ill ex-stripper whose real name is Chelsea Van Valkenburg, Quinn was the creator of a tediously dull game called “Depression Quest.” She broke up with her boyfriend, a software geek named Eron Gjoni, and allegedly became intimate with a videogame journalist named Nathan Grayson. In August 2014, Gjoni published a nearly 10,000-word article exposing Quinn’s alleged misconduct. Last July, I summarized the essence of the #GamerGate scandal:

Quinn was accused of gaining favorable coverage of her work — which is allegedly useless and awful — by providing Grayson and others access to her nasty poontang. And when these allegations of quid pro quo were published by one of Quinn’s embittered ex-lovers, Quinn’s defenders accused her critics of misogyny.

There were all kinds of background factors involved, but liberals decided that the narrative was about “misogyny” within the male-dominated videogame industry, and also about women being “harassed” online. We can stipulate both of those points — yes, many videogame dudes are crude sexists, and yes, women are targeted for harassment — without allowing ourselves to be distracted from the essence of #GamerGate, namely that some women are shrewdly exploiting gender as a means of gaining lucrative advantages. The videogame industry would very much like to attract more female players, and this has created certain incentives that attract cunning opportunists.

When you factor in the desire of corporations to insulate themselves against discrimination lawsuits by hiring more women, and also the “white knight” tendencies of some men (including “progressive” journalists like Grayson), the suspicions of unethical favoritism behind #GamerGate weren’t “misogyny,” but basic common sense.

All of that background was obscured by shrieks of “harassment” during the #GamerGate controversy, and few of the self-proclaimed Victims of Misogyny shrieked louder than Zoe Quinn. She sought a restraining order against Gjoni (discussed here by Eugene Volokh) and pressed charges of criminal harassment. Now suddenly, the charges have been dropped.

Why I Just Dropped The Harassment Charges Against The Man Who Started GamerGate https://t.co/i2cyIvn74b — Zoë “Shitpost” Quinn (@UnburntWitch) February 11, 2016

Do you want to read 2,700 words of Zoe Quinn’s self-dramatizing account of her suffering as a Victim of Misogyny?

Don’t let me stop you, but my eyes glazed over when she claimed to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of people saying mean things about her on the Internet. Keep in mind, this isn’t about whether Eron Gjoni is a Bad Ex-Boyfriend — obviously, he is — and it’s not about whether people should say mean things on the Internet — obviously, they shouldn’t — but rather the question is whether this has anything to do with “social justice.” And it’s also a question of whether an entire industry should be conformed to the zany whims of mentally ill ex-strippers and other such feminist crackpots. Must everything in our culture, including videogames, be banned as “misogyny” if it is judged unacceptable by the ideological standards of Gender Studies majors?

Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, and restricting freedom of speech — effectively prohibiting anyone from criticizing feminism — is necessary to the feminist movement’s success. The First Amendment does not protect libel or harassment. However, if Zoe Quinn is a public figure, then Eron Gjoni’s allegations that she was using sex to gain favorable coverage for her stupid videogames could be construed as journalism in the public interest. It is never a crime to publish the truth, and the truth is that Chelsea Van Valkenburg (alias “Zoe Quinn”) is a mentally ill ex-stripper.















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