GamerGate and the Politics of Gender

I am much more active on X than I was during the first wave of GamerGate and I am disturbed to my core about how women are treated in the gaming industry of late. I know intellectually it has always been bad but seeing more screenshots and having more conversations with people in the gaming industry has made me understand more about the toxic nature of gaming for many. I want to take a brief analysis of how narratives of gender have changed in the past couple of decades and reflect on how to challenge oppressive narratives and develop safer communities, even in the midst of more traumatic attacks which will come. Because this is a foundational piece for a reflection, this will focus more on philosophical sources rather than video games as I want to develop foundations for how my own thinking has developed and chart some new courses forward.

Screenshots are all taken from my PS5 console.

1) Gender Determinism and Superiority

Gender determinism (i.e. the idea that all men behave in certain ways and all women behave in certain ways and that is coded into nature) is a major hurdle for how we perceive our own behavior as people. Some of this has been seen in the great increase in eating disorders because of how men and women are portrayed in magazines for advertisement purposes. However, at a deeper root, gender determinism has grown as a response to the backlash created by our scientific and philosophical discoveries about gender thanks to various postmodern movements (the LGBT movement being one of them but also the deconstructionists of the late 1800’s-early 1900’s.)

Religion has been a key source of the modern emphasis on gender determinism because the changing role women in society has challenged traditional gender roles (i.e. men work and women stay-at-home). This backlash started heavily in the 1980’s as more religious leaders became gravely concerned about changing social conditions. Catholics and Evangelicals made an alliance around Ronald Reagan based around “family values” wanting to move society back towards the family structure of the 1940’s-1950’s after World War II. This political emphasis also was centered around debates about abortion as the lynchpin thinking that would enrage people to get people to move back to traditional family values.

Conservative thought also focused heavily on the work of Louann Brizendine and Dr. Sax who through experiments with rats developed their theories on male and female determinism. Feminist philosophy also utilized gender determinism to prove that women were more caring and thus were better than men. Carol Gilligan popularized this philosophical movement and this is just being felt in non-philosophical circles in the last 5-10 years. Conservative gender determinism highlights how only men should be in leadership roles “because of a lack of emotion” when making decisions. (i.e. men are driven by logic and women driven by emotion.) This drive for gender-based superiority has been reinforced by an unwitting and unreflective acceptance of gender determinism.

However, there is a critical flaw in this uncritical acceptance. Gender determinism isn’t consistent with human experience. There are three key flaws in the work of Brizendine and Sax: 1) rat and human brains are very similar but not completely equivalent. As such, there is always a scale of gray needed when interpreting gender experiments on rats, which in my opinion is not done well in either Brizendine or Sax’s work. 2) Because of genetic passing on of trauma, proven through studies on inter-generational trauma in oppressed populations, what is natural is deeply questionable because people do not start as a blank slate. 3) Animals have great intelligence and while humans cannot understand the communication of rats, there is no conclusive proof that rats have no socialization through their hierarchies. Thus taking rats as an example of “natural behavior” which correlates to humans is deeply speculative at best and outright data manipulation at worst. Carol Gilligan as a philosopher utilizes a more experiential view not grounded in research but her use of gender determinism doesn’t hold since the base premise of gender determinism is widely speculative even if it appears our experience is one of gender determinism.

In popular parlance, gender determinism is still widely viewed as true. So many people have believed it for so long that the idea of a popular acceptance of anything different than gender determinism would take a monumental educational and movement building effort. When examining the gaming industry and Gamergate, this desire for superiority from particularly conservative men has been peddled by influencers who either feel hurt because of how the world has changed or influencers who benefit from simplifying human nature.

Gender determinism is detrimental to effective community building because the binary created by it increases the probability of people using the binary to justify their own supremacy. Culture and politics take advantage of this division to pass policies which harm the majority of people.

2) The Introduction of Spectrums

Sexuality, gender, and mental illness in the last 15 years have focused on the language of spectrum and I think this is deeply consistent with the nature of being as a whole. Light, color, and heat both exist on a spectrum with different wavelengths, some visible and detected by humans but many of which are not unless we have special tools. These wavelengths are measurable as a way of explaining how these aspects of nature have a calculated value. This is an expansion of knowledge beyond common parlance of hot, cold, or warm for example.

Because nature has numerous spectrums, it makes to explain human behaviors in the form of spectrums. However, for binary thinking, spectrums are a nightmare because there are not just 2 options. While language on specific topics in human behavior have utilized the language of spectrum, most common constructs operate on a binary basis. Determinism often goes hand-in-hand with dualism because the goal is to simplify reality into two distinct realities and to create easier choices. The consequence is that we become far more distanced from our actual nature of existing in the midst of and supporting numerous spectrums. What is and what appears to be are two distinct realities. And as I argued above, what appears to be and widely accepted is hurting us as a society and as gamers.

All people should have their journey honored and their presence accepted. Our love of games crosses gender, mental illness, ability, and sexuality. Fights about dualism and superiority have ruined this landscape.

3) Correcting Abusive Cultures

One aspect of postmodern thought many different cultural leaders have embraced is being against the idea of objective truth. Subjective truth is asserting the primacy of experience rather than assenting to an objective standard of truth. Leaders have used these philosophies to justify harm which they create because of the narratives they have created against others. This has always been true to some extent. War propaganda is as old as history itself but the nuance between we are objectively better than others (i.e. non-white people are savages etc) and thus should subjugate them versus everyone can learn the values we have built and should (i.e. non-white cultures can learn our emphasis on freedom and individualism and should, even if through subtle force). In practice, the result is often the same, but the justification is different to match linguistic changes and sentiments within populations.

However, we’re seeing an acceptance of racist, sexist, and homophobic public speech because of the empowerment of right-wing dictators across the globe. Left-wing thought has also retrenched into itself, though ethically, it is always morally acceptable to focus on the protection of people than their destruction. We’re at a place where dialogue is almost impossible even among individuals, but even more so with groups from larger cultural movements. For many, dialogue is not safe because some opinions are harmful to people. (e.g. dialoguing as a gamer as a woman with someone who thinks women should be breeding factories and hidden from public life is not a safe dialogue).

Even as a prided postmodern researcher and science/quantum enthusiast, I still believe in right and wrong behavior. The grounding of right and wrong is about any behavior which promotes love, avoids jealousy, and resist all attempts and temptations toward superiority. Here are my suggestions for correcting abusive cultures in video games.

Develop alternative ownership structures for video game corporations- Hierarchical models of gaming ownership are causing more division in our gaming community. And at the end of the day, major corporations do not care about us at all. They want more money and to please their shareholders so they stay employed in a position where they can take advantage of the labor of others. Cultures of sexual harassment, gender violence, and domination occur in cultures which have no checks and balances and corporations do not have checks and balances in the United States. Developing cooperative ownership models for game distribution would allow for new cultures to develop.

Deepen our Discourse about Video Games- So much of our conversations about video games revolve around the latest ship or romantic relationship. However, video games offer so much more art and beauty than the latest ship or romance but many of these are heterosexist and promoting binaries. While relationships are vitally important and a key point of connection, games of late have been promoting many positive justice and environmental themes which often get swept under the rug. To overcome the evils of discrimination and harassment, we must become connected to a larger dialogue around justice in general. We have the grounding for a video game based movement around justice but it will require us to shift our focus a bit in our processing of gaming.

Ban harmful members of community while working on larger Truth and Healing Effort to provide education.- No one should be unsafe in any gaming community. As we move toward equity as a society, many privileged people can feel easily offended when other cultures are represented and thus lash out. In the moment, it is vital to ban people causing harm to protect the safety of the community. However, people can only grow if there is a space for learning and accountability. I have no hope for corporations to change their behavior. However, some individuals will hit moments where they want to learn and change. I had to grow and change significantly myself because I have caused a lot of harm in my life. The balance and mental health to support community will have to be a group effort and we will need to create some structures as a gaming community to do so.

Conclusion

Harassment against women and backlashes against men are founded on a faulty logic which is still widely accepted by most people in society. We have had these power struggles for such a long time that we have not stopped to reflect on whether our beliefs about gender have any basis in reality. More needs to be said about how relationships/friendships in general are broken but that will require more analysis of attention spans and depth which is beyond the scope of this piece.

I want us to be more supportive of people who are harmed and build something better as a gaming community which embraces the joys and struggles of all people. Our first step is to find a centering point as a community where we can mourn the loss of employment and acknowledge that gaming spaces have not been safe for all people in general. I am interested in finding others to help me plan such an event and presence online.