Jill Scharr :
Hi @RefresherDev, this is Jill, the writer of the piece. I don't ever discourage people from playing triple-A games. I mention Destiny and Skyrim in my first paragraph. This whole article is literally about how I think there's room for a diversity of opinions in gaming, and that it's OKAY to not agree with me. I feel like you didn't read the article on which you're commenting.
Also, I love Star Wars AND Brokeback Mountain
Many of the harassers seem far more concerned with Quinn's personal life than with journalistic integrity. Others seem to just not like Depression Quest. The harassers were so persistent and lacking in factual basis that at one point Quinn tried to fight back by filing a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) request with YouTube to take down a particularly slanderous video.
I feel you didn't do your research on this matter. The video was mirrored here:
https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=Equc1QnQ9rw
As you can see, it does not use any of her pictures (any pictures at all) and isn't slander, first off it says 'IF' second off he is criticizing her actions in regard to journalism, he DOES talk about cheating but he brushes it aside pretty early on as irrelevent.
Even if Quinn were involved in unethical behavior, she wouldn't deserve the treatment she's experienced. Harassment is never OK. It's never just a joke. It's never the harassed person's fault for "being offended." Harassment hurts.
You also have a misunderstanding of what the vast majority of people in GamerGate think, this image is the most widely circulated on the hashtag for a while now.
But the bulk of the GamerGate supporters have no such ethical concerns, and they are simply defending their own definition of gaming from criticism or diversity of opinion.
This became clear about a week after the Quinn issue began, when media critic Anita Sarkeesian posted an unrelated video examining the ways women are treated in mainstream video-game narratives. GamerGate quickly rallied against Sarkeesian, and the harassment and doxxing (online posting of personal information) Sarkeesian experienced was so severe that she did not feel safe in her own home.
Sarkeesian is in no way, shape, or form linked to the criticism of Quinn at all. The people who harassed her were not linked to GG. The harassment of Sarkeesian has to do as much with GamerGate's beliefs and values as the doxxing of jay3dfox has to do with Feminism.
Why did this happen? Because Sarkeesian was challenging many people's definition of what is "normal" in games. As a result, GamerGate decided that Sarkeesian was not a "true gamer."
Again, that's not why it happened. As for Saarkesian,
criticism towards her has been mostly because she refused to acknowledge another viewpoint entirely, and websites never, ever, report on the counter argument.
Again, both sides are at fault here. However, the direct labelling of an ENTIRE movement as something it's not is just incorrect. In so many cases you referred to GamerGate as a single entity. Would you do the same for Feminism? Racial Equality? The Black Panthers exist. There are a lot of feminists on tumblr who would like you to know that all men must die.
Now I'm a feminist, and I'll tell you that's as far away from the goals of feminism as you can possibly get. I am also a minority, MLK is more of what I think Civil Rights are about too.
I am also in support of GamerGate. I'd request you stop making broad assumptions and do some of your own research before coming to conclusions. Remember, GamerGate, 4Chan, Reddit, ALL of these are living, breathing, human beings who are passionate about their games and don't want to feel kicked out of their hobby.
I have seen nothing from 4Chan to suggest misogyny, outside of the stuff that was deleted and condemned immediately ("shill" is the common term for a hateful asshole,) several sympathized with a transgendered teenager that was doxxed by so called "anti-GG." They also donated to a feminist group trying to get women into the game industry and later another seperate charity. These aren't some two-faced evil plots, these are sincere gestures aimed at making their community both diverse and progressive, they just want to trust that reporters are clean and fair, and that their community isn't being attacked by secret blacklists (which have been proven to exist, see Chris Plante's 1500 person blocklist as well as Boogie's posts about his emails.)
This isn't about exclusion, this is about inclusion. NotYourShield wouldn't exist if this was about exclusion.
So yea, the idiots exist, but they're as GamerGate as 'feminists' who sex shame virgins, both are wrong and not representative of their issue.