My letter to @stephentotilo, with omission, concerning doxxing #gamergate

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Hi Mr. Totilo,

Firstly, I’d like to again thank you for reaching out in this fashion for a more full account of my doxing/threat email. Since Ms. Wu’s doxing and harassment, the symmetry between my own threat and hers has, I believe, been bizarrely positive (very thin silver lining) in that exposure of harassment seems to be at the forefront of both sides of GamerGate’s collective minds. My sincere hope is that this moment can serve as a closure to two months of doxing, threats, and harassment which have demonized both sides in the minds of their “opposition”, and so often quashed civil debate and exchange.

Also, I’m inclined to apologize to you for the manner in which you had to reach out to me in my relative anonymity. Contacting via twitter could not have been easy given how ravenously critical many in GG can be towards journalists at Kotaku. If your email inbox has filled with angry messages, I’m genuinely sorry. Over the course of the day I’ve advocated for those in “my camp” to don an open mind to your article, though many (myself included) remain quite skeptical, as you undoubtedly saw in the comments.

Further, certain proGG individuals have reached out or DMed me privately to either request I not submit further comment or publicly post whatever I write here, so that any resultant article will not be “spun” against GamerGate. I’m inclined not to heed this advice, as you and you alone among the major, boycotted sites have requested further information. I hope to reward this gesture with an act of good faith on my part. As such, I will be posting this message as a twitlonger, but will omit the actual story of my harassment. Thus you will have the first take on it in any resultant article, compelling proGG to read said detail through your work. However, I reserve the right to post my story in full on twitter immediately after your article breaks, for clarity etc and because, in the hours since you reached out, there have been additional requests for further information (mostly relatively small outlets). Simply put, I’m “trusting” you to convey the information first as you choose, but will make public any “spin” I feel applied (again, I’m truly sad that this feels like an important measure, but as a proGG individual, I can only hope you understand my reticence.) All information not disclosed publicly by me will be after “******”

I came to GamerGate after the initial shockwaves, first becoming aware of its existence through the Saarkesian article in the BBC, which detailed the harassment she had faced and portrayed her detractors, and gamers, in a very poor light. As someone who is occasionally the target online of “gamer girl” slurs, this struck a chord with me. I watched her videos, and found them interesting, though as one who had played some of the games mentioned (Far Cry, for instance), I was a bit perturbed by the broad generalizations of gamers and video games.

Simply put, I considered her presented evidence unconvincing to those who, as gamers or in the industry, were in positions to actually manifest change for representations I completely agree are often insulting to women.

But had I not actually played the games she critiqued, or been a gamer, I would have accepted her representation as gospel, especially if I was already laboring under the belief that gamers actually were the bottomfeeding, culturally tone deaf underachievers we have been, and are, so often portrayed as. What I saw was akin to islamophobia, rationalizing with meager data fear of what is not understood.

This led me to actually go on twitter for the first time in my life, and lurk without posting for two weeks, observing who and what GG was, and the manner in which the “movement” was heading. After two weeks (approximately), I joined in the fray with great trepidation.

The importance of this trepidation would be abundantly clear to any in the world I occupy, and have fought very hard to be a member of. In 2012 MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC chose to, for the first time, include a raft of 14 video games in its permanent collection. Previously I had had involvement with MoMA installations and publications which had placed me on private, unofficial forums within their locus. Up to and after the announcement, there was deep division and, in some cases, outright revulsion at the notion of including video games in the western world’s premiere modern art institution. Numerous comments were a litany of gamer stereotypes which I had heard parroted for my whole life, abuse which led me to game exclusively on the PC, lest my housemates or guests discover an xbox controller.

I’m under no delusion that my world is not an extreme case, but to those within the microcosm of the gaming industry / community, it may be easy to forget just how pervasive stereotypes of ALL who play video games can be, whether they label themselves a gamer or not. As a second example, I was recently a consultant for a starchitect firm competing to design what was then called the “George Lucas Museum of Art”, now rebranded the “Lucas Museum of Narrative Art”. The derision thrown about by architects, even those directly on the project, was downright unnerving. Further, that same museum was quite literally forced out of San Francisco after residents hated the notion of a “nerd museum for the Star Wars guy” was proposed in their backyard (museum will almost certainly now be in Chicago, unless location is again changed).

When I read the now infamous “gamers are dead” articles, THIS was when I decided it was worth the risk to be relatively vocal in the debate, as those articles echoed every stereotype of gamers and more broadly nerds I was familiar with, but had added on a new slur, “misogynist”. I truly believe that this is the demonstration of an inferiority complex within the community, as certain developers, and those within the gaming press, see the identity of “gamer” to be unsalvageable, and thus seek to bifurcate the community into those who are artistically, intellectually, and ideologically advancing the medium, and the “gamers”; those who hold the respectability of video games back.

The clearest comparison I can make is the schism within european architecture, particularly Adolf Loos’s “Ornament and Crime”, and the Bauhaus school and movement with gave birth to modernism in the early portion of the 20th century. Again, a “trades craft” medium seen as relatively backward in high art circles, working to enoble itself. The key tragedy there, which I see manifesting within gaming, is that all effort was made to advance the creators, but not the consumer public. The result was that, within a generation, a new and to this day unresolved chasm had opened between what elite architects were being taught to produce and what the general public wanted (look around and see the disparity between the homes of architects, for instance, and the homes of the general population.) I am an avowed aesthetic appreciator of modernism and contemporary design, but, like most practitioners (particularly within the USA), we are patronized by a very slim cultural elite (especially in residential work) while the vast majority of built work remains codified in multi-century old typologies, built by inferior practitioners with no concept of how to do decent design, even within their own stylistic proclivities. Most high end architects, urban planners, etc. simply would not be able to exist without the support of academic positions, think tanks, and/or family money. This is a very possible future within gaming, where the public wants one thing, but all great talent is funneled elsewhere; where AAA games are made by those unskilled and motivated primarily by monetary gain. A world where brilliant creations exist only in indie circles, to be played by almost no one.

I would understand if you consider this prediction to be unrealistically pessimistic, but, to a limited degree, I am living in that condition within my own medium.

In any case, what was to be a relatively simple gesture of support on my part became a time consuming endeavor, as I spent more time in the GG tag and became more involved in actively discussing the issues raised.

At some point, my annoyance with the narrative that proGG was “stupid anti-art, anti-intellectual plebeians” became insufferable, and I chose to post my faculty ID with a proGG message, my face and detail blurred out. This is where my doxing originated.

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In any case, I’ve considered this a handled issue for a while now, and save one outburst last friday (too emotional on my part) I’ve endeavoured not to have such ugliness cloud the issues at hand, such as I am able to do so. My sincere hope is that this is the time when we, pro and anti GG, can see past the trolls latching to either side and start to formulate meaningful discourse. I’m in GG, not neutral, because I want to help mold GamerGate in such a fashion, and I’ll keep trying to do so.

Just for clarity, this message has been sent via a temporary email, and I will not be responding via this email. If you have questions please contact or DM me on twitter, where I have followed you.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck with your article,
ggfeminist

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