If you have ever wandered into the battle between #GamerGate and Feminism Twitter, you know all about the massive amounts of vitriol and hate from both sides. What if I told you there was a way that they could communicate that doesn’t involve telling each other to die in a fire?
YouTuber Liana K put out a video discussing how we can make gaming culture better for women, and she had a lot of good points. One of the main points she brought up was that it’s not gamers that “Other” female gamers—it’s actually women writing about gamers who do that. They assume that all gamers are white, cis-gender, lower-class males still sitting in their mom’s basement, but Liana herself is a prime example of how that is not true. The word “gamer” literally just describes anyone who plays and enjoys video games (Candy Crush players excluded), but some feminist (and non-feminist) journalists have tried to co-opt the term for their own political agenda.
Liana goes on to make the accurate point that when gamers are treated as lesser people they automatically become defensive, even when faced with legitimate grievances. It is near impossible to get other people to listen to you when you spend all of your time hammering them with personal attacks. That last line, though, applies to both sides of the argument. The #Gamergate movement is not faultless, and many times they prefer to attack rather than listen. I know “listen to feminists” isn’t exactly a line that will garner a lot of positive response from that crowd, but it is vital to listen sometimes.
I talked to Liana about what she sees as the biggest hindrance to women in gaming, and she believes it is the fact that there is this misguided urge to protect women that it actually holds them back. She touched on this a lot in her video too, and I think it is absolutely true that both media and gamers themselves feel this urge to protect women when they really don’t need it. It’s then that the trolls come out to attack targets that were never weak in the first place, but were portrayed as weak and then expected to act like it in order to fit the narrative.
Women in gaming are no different than men in gaming, and they shouldn’t be treated any differently. They have the same skills as men, the same level of thought as men, in fact there are a lot of women who are actually better and smarter than men, they just don’t get the chance to show that. I think both sides recognize this, and it’s an excellent launching point going forward to make an improvement when it comes to gaming.
This might come as a shock to some, but both feminists and the #Gamergate folks have the same goal: make gaming better. Sure, there are different ways to go about that, but in the end the desire is still the same. Liana brings up the point that the goal should be to magnify the aspects of games that make them great while minimizing the ones that don’t. Obviously all gamers are going to disagree on which aspects are good and which are not, but that is why it is so important for both sides to effectively communicate.
Video games are meant to unite people for one common goal; entertainment. Games are not some sort of political machine that sides should look to use for their own goal. Games are where most go to escape that kind of nonsense. It’s long past time for both sides to start finding common ground through reasonable conversation.
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