Before you watch the Law and Order: SVU “Gamergate” Episode

(Trigger warning, I guess. It's SVU. The whole show is a trigger warning)



I've seen a lot of screaming online about the “Gamergate” episode of SVU. Both “pro” and “anti” folks are already making threats about what they're going to do if certain conditions aren't met, and I've been sitting in front of my computer going “This. This guys. This is the problem. You think you're in any position to make demands of a network TV show.”



Two reasons why you don't have the right to tell SVU how to cover a given topic: 1) Free Speech. 2) It's fiction.



This isn't a news or fact-based show anymore, folks. It's a work of fiction that's been on the air for years. I'm a fan of the show, but I'm aware that it's far from the reality of actual police who investigate rape.



For instance, this week's episode was a mix of the Eric Garner choking death and the case of the dentist who was raping patients in his dental chair. But while the episode drew on both these topics, it was not a documentary on either of them. Law and Order is not about REAL cops, nor is it about REAL issues related to video games. Real cops don't single-mindedly chase down bad guys the way TV cops do. Real cops file paperwork and work multiple cases at any given time.



On the episode this week, a sixteen year old girl accused two men – the first a black stranger, the second, her uncle – of the same rape. On TV, the SVU team moved Heaven and Earth to see justice done. In the real world, the case would likely be seen as contaminated, and the whole thing would have been thrown out because the main witness would be too easy to destroy on cross-examination.



Furthermore, Eric Garner was never accused of rape. The tie-in to Garner's case was the fact that the character based on him died from a heart attack caused by asthma and his family and African American community leaders were outraged. That's it.



Based on the preview of the “Gamergate” episode, it's obviously NOT A DOCUMENTARY. Anita Sarkeesian cancelled her Utah speaking gig after threats. Rayna... whatever the fictional character's name is called... insists on going ahead with the whole thing. But did you also note how fixated she was on the media appearances? On SVU, things are never as they seem at first glance.



Yes, the character is an obvious proxy for Anita Sarkeesian and her boyfriend is obviously a proxy for McIntosh. But this sort of thing happens EVERY WEEK on this show. Gaming is not special in that way.



And all I can think of watching that clip is Ice-T's character in Gears of War 3. So obviously the cast of SVU is not against gaming.



Furthermore, The threats against Sarkeesian were happening before Gamergate started. This isn't a Gamergate episode. This is a Sarkeesian episode that because mainstream news because an episode of harassment was the spark that led to the articles that started the “Gamergate Controversy”.



I think the only thing we can reasonably take away from this whole experience is that the entire Gamergate controversy is seen by the rest of the world as a complete freak show. It's exposed a self-destructive undercurrent of the video game industry, and that's good. Personally? I'm furious at the so-called professionals who have continued to fight an ideological war that has led to nothing more than a loss of revenue across the whole industry as advertisers flee a toxic political environment. I can't expect the average person to understand those levers, but the pros? Shame on you. ... Oh who am I kidding? You're not reading this. You've used a block list that I'm on because I happened to follow a few people for INFORMATION PURPOSES. Not because I agree with them. So-called professionals do have an increased burden to behave... you know, professionally? Instead, a bunch of men in video games keep speaking for women like me. And what are they saying? YOU ARE HARASSED.



No shit, dude. I knew that ten years ago. I refuse to let it define me. What kills me is that these guys who are writing this stuff... they personally throw women to the wolves and deny real support every day, and they don't even realize they're doing it. That's the flaw of the Left that led to radical feminism in the first place. Robin Morgan's "Goodbye to All That" wasn't written about right-wingers, folks.



A network TV show wouldn't be able to cover the whole of the Gamergate Controversy anyway, because it's too absurd – People having sex live on the interest, special needs kids getting doxxed, anime “child porn”... it just doesn't stop. It's like the deep web is having a coming out party.



But the thing that actually pisses me off is that diversity has become a wedge issue. People are flinging around words like “racist”, “homophobic” and “transphobic” just because they don't like someone. This isn't justice. This is spoiled brat behaviour. When I was more active in that stuff, before I became a grown up, I was given the marching orders “point out problem behavior, not problem people”. Why? Because the issue was assumed to be education, not evil. That's gone now.



I can't help but believe that the reason this story got so much traction in the first place is that people are predisposed to believing gamers are deviant. But the “ethics in gaming” crusaders also made some mistakes due to inexperience off the top by backing people they could not possibly have known would drive the wedge deeper. Rookie mistake. Understandable. They shouldn't be cast out forever because they were desperate, provided they're willing to own that mistake and stop repeating it.



We're living in an age of “burn it all down”, and I'm so tired of being set on fire. If an MRA isn't dismissing all my opinions as moodiness or ejaculating on a photo of me, some “social justice” advocate is insisting I'm a bigot and calling for my head (sometimes literally) without even having a direct conversation with me.



What I wish the Law and Order episode would deal with – but I'm assuming it won't – is that there are very serious issues threatening to erode the hard-won rights of women in the first world that are being over shadowed by fetishizing fictional depictions of women: the clawing back of reproductive rights, a serious lack of public understanding of how the family court system works, the closing of programs and offices that monitor the status of women, missing and murdered Aboriginal women being treated as statistics instead of people, and “baby bias” -- the reality that career-oriented women of child-bearing age must convince potential employers that they're not planning on having kids for the foreseeable future. I may never have kids of my own because of that one. What's the point of having kids if I can't afford to feed and clothe them because I can't get a job with a living wage?



In Canada, it may even be possible that we have a rape problem in our Federal Government that specifically affects women. That's a scary thought.



It's terrifying how many people have been trained to believe that we don't need feminism anymore because it's seen as just anti-men and useless. Right, because it wouldn't help men to be seen as legitimate caregivers instead of default “breadwinners” if a man is more inclined to care for kids than be an aggressive careerist. The ONLY way to get to that place is to destigmatize “women's work” and the biology of reproduction. One could claim that this is “men rights activist” territory, but that's absurd. The reality of the stigma against stay-at-home dads is the reality of the stigma against raising children as a legitimate life choice. Even some women who stay home with their kids are seen as lesser. I personally love working with moms, because so many moms have this perspective that's rooted in the reality of puke and dirty diapers that an idealist "mastermind" like me desperately needs. CEOs need to understand that the role of mother makes you a better employee because you have that humbled perspective.



THESE are serious issues. Whether Princess Peach is a symbol of patriarchy is not a serious issue, though it might be an interesting issue. My theory on the whole “Sarkeesian Show” is that sending her threats has become a form of e-sport: the idiots that send that stuff know she's likely to publish it, and therefore there's a temporary infamy that encourages further threats. These people can't be "Somebody" any other way, so a codependency has formed between Sarkeesian and her harassers.



I'm sure that if I collated and published the garbage I get in a given week, it would be pretty horrible too. I bet if any high-profile man online did the same thing, it would be equally awful. This isn't “toxic masculinity”. This is more like the nasty social aggression that pre-teen GIRLS are known for. And that's why I don't choose to focus on the negatives I receive. Sure, every so often, something is so stupid that I have a bit of a laugh about it. And sometimes I get royally pissed off because people believe nonsense and I loathe mob mentalities. But I have perspective.



I got away from hard news in part because I couldn't stand spending every day mired in other people's misery. I chose to be an entertainer and pop culture philosopher because I want to make people's every day lives a little easier. The same reasoning that drives me taking cheesecake photos drives my desire to write “smart stuff”: I'm an advocate for the happiness of regular folks. It kills me that I had to give up the pin up modelling to be taken “seriously”, but that's the world. It makes the world a bit greyer and darker, but that's the world. The sadder I get that I had to make that choice, the more I realize that we still need feminism. SVU is a part of modern feminism, because... oh god Liv is love.



I love video games because they inject shape and color into this grey world. People need brightness. The problem with brightness is that it's fragile. It's much harder to make something brighter than to make it darker. For this reason, it's important to remember, if you're going to watch the SVU episode, that NO ONE HAS ACTUALLY BEEN PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED IN CONNECTION WITH THE GAMERGATE CONTROVERSY.



Games are not the reason some people act violently. People acted violently long before video games existed. The social tendency to train women to be terrified of the world started over a thousand years ago. Video games didn't create it.



I'm so tired of being afraid. I'm so completely tired of it. More and more, I wish that I could be more like these women who monetize their harassment because it just seems to be an easy route to financial comfort, but I wasn't born for the easy road. This harassment porn just reminds me that we still have work to do regarding the role and perceptions of women, including in the rich world, and that work isn't just about educating men. It's about seeing the value in feminine things like nurturing, caring and feelings to the point they stop being seen as feminine and start being seen as human.



So I'm begging everyone not to freak out about the SVU episode, because that will just kick off round 3454332434234 of the “Radfem vs MMRA” blood feud. (MMRA = misogynist men's rights activist, so as to distinguish from moderate men's rights activists who predominantly support causes related to military personnel.) Stop fighting the radicals, because that only makes them stronger. Instead, support moderate voices so that real dialogue can take place. It is possible, as long as we stop being afraid.

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