A rebuttal I emailed Jesse Singal over his shameful excuse for clickbait GethN7 Follow Mar 30, 2016 · 4 min read

(minor edits for typos from the original)

http://nymag.com/following/2016/03/this-looks-like-a-disgraceful-gamergate-win.html?mid=twitter_nymag

Gamergate May Have Just Won Its Most Disgraceful Scalp Yet

nymag.com

A young Nintendo employee just lost her job, likely due to her undergraduate thesis and an intense online harassment campaign from Gamergate.

https://archive.is/lFC4H#selection-1469.0-1475.155

While I acknowledge you disagree with this, several things are factually wrong aside from the one correction you made.

(my comments in bold, your words in italics)

Over the last few months, many of these gamers have turned their ire on Rapp, a young marketing employee at Nintendo who, as Patrick Klepek wrote in a comprehensive and well-reported article in Kotaku, “has been accused of somehow being a driving force behind the supposed censorship of that company’s games.” Rapp, it should be said, doesn’t even have anything to do with localization at Nintendo; she’s been targeted simply for having been “outspoken on Twitter about online abuse against women in gaming,” as Klepek put it. In the course of digging as deeply into her past as possible to find ways to discredit her, some gamers found an undergraduate thesis she wrote in 2011, and it seriously exacerbated the campaign against her.

You are correct, she works in marketing, not localization, her own husband made that clear to me on Medium. However, it was not just the thesis that was the decisive factor for Nintendo (even I defended it on legal and academic grounds)

In her thesis, Rapp laid out a highly academic case for why the U.S. shouldn’t pressure Japan, where the sexualization of young teens has long been entrenched in certain corners of the culture, to adopt child-pornography laws similar to our own. It reads like pretty standard-issue undergraduate cultural relativism. Anyone familiar with these arguments — even those inclined to think it’s fair to judge someone based on academic papers they wrote in college — would know that Rapp wasn’t condoning child pornography, but rather making a more nuanced argument about American cultural imperialism and so forth (she also argued that child pornography doesn’t cause people to abuse children).

This is true for the most part. However, it was not this that she came under fire for.

These nuances were lost, perhaps willfully, on a group of Gamergaters and their allies, who quickly used the thesis and various old tweets of Rapp’s to launch a campaign to tar her as a defender of child pornography — a campaign that extended to lovely corners of the internet like Stormfront. The anti-Rapp crusaders were helped along when Jamie Walton, who runs an anti-sex-trafficking organization she co-founded with the filmmaker Kevin Smith, decided to ask via Twitter why Rapp hadn’t been fired (Walton has also beefed with another famous Gamergate target, the game developer Brianna Wu). Walton’s involvement seemed to accelerate the online campaign against Rapp — even as some gaters, it should be said, questioned the ethics of the campaign on KotakuInAction, Gamergate’s Reddit redoubt.

My gratitude for linking what I wrote in your article. However, since I assume you read it, it was her tweets about child sexual agency and later her defense of child porn possession and someone caught for such an act that I considered reprehensible. I am incredibly disappointed this nuance was not included. Also, Ms. Walton was a third party dragged into the Wu situation, wanting to know the truth about the Jace Conners hoax (before it being a hoax was clear). Ms. Walton’s public tweets and posts of hers I was able to find on the Kiwi Farms consistently reflected a neutral stance on GamerGate, although she did admit she felt contempt for Wu, feeling Wu’s victim act was a disservice to real victims.

Now the crusaders appear to have gotten their wish. We’ve reached out to Nintendo for a statement about the reason for Rapp’s dismissal and will update this post if the company responds. But it certainly looks like she lost her job because she wrote a college thesis well within the bounds of the subjects discussed in college theses.

If so, that’s an inspiring victory for Gamergate, a movement dedicated to standing up for the little guy and protecting people’s rights to free expression.

Wrong again. Nintendo has not specified, even Ms. Rapp has declined to mention the specifics.

And if by little guy, you mean children, then I feel no guilt whatsoever for my role in this.

Also, what’s your excuse for this?

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/715313710743552001

http://tweetsave.com/jessesingal/status/715313710743552001

This is disgusting and if Ms. Walton wants to sue for libel, I would not blame her, as your article was written with several errors and omissions of fact, and remember what I said about not recanting when you are worthy of glory and commenting when you are guilty of destard?

I meant it, and I will be publishing every word of this response email in a rebuttal piece on Medium, as while on topics regarding scientific and medical fact your work remains excellent and you have my commendation, this does not, and I intend to give the public my rebuttal.

I merely hope your upcoming piece on the Kiwi Farms has better research and you show more integrity than this shameful excuse for clickbait.