Interesting that this question was asked in relation to GamerGate. When I researched that, the major media was only reporting the feminists' side of things and the claims of abuse. It was really hard to cut through the noise to figure out what the core dispute was. By the time I found a structured presentation of counterpoints...
...they suggested it was that a few women disrespected their market, trolled millions of people (including women gamers), made claims of abuse with feminist ideology, violated their own rules for money in design of their own games, and were possibly using the claims to get attention to their games. Never heard any of that in original reporting on major sites and that's why I was originally confused about why so much hate came their way.
Not saying this is true of anything referenced in the above article. Just telling readers to be aware that there's at least two trends going on:
1. People, including & especially women, being harassed online with any number of bogus justifications covering up bullying. It's a larger problem & the justification (eg feminism) rarely is the real issue.
2. A tiny portion of women, who may or may not represent most feminists, getting slammed online for using bullying and media manipulation to push their politics or products. I say media manipulation because I almost never see major media report calling it out even when it's obvious. Reporting is often one-sided, possibly due to risk of losing business if their image is seen as discriminating against women. I think one can argue against specific women's claims without hating on women in general.
So, we have two problems. One gets all the attention. Each time, the recipient of that abuse spins it as them being in a minority, having certain attributes, etc as evidence there's a large scale attack on those things. Reality is human nature is at work with any group competing with others and lack of accountability letting some be abusive. Certainly prejudices in there to combat but it really boils down to abusive people enabled by the Internet. Happens offline, too, as anyone who went to school, a bar, a football game... anything... should know.
Other problem we should watch out for and call out when we see it. That problem is not limited to feminist: any members of a group that can make itself look the underdog or target of abuse can use that as leverage in promoting politics or themselves. This happens across the board. Relevant to this thread, that many feminists do it certainly contributes to attacks on those individuals and might contribute to attacks on others posting similar idea. The troll throws them all in one mental category and attacks at the first sign of the same ideology in a new person.
GamerGate became what it did because the media grew utterly detached with their audience, and a couple of unfortunate events pushed it over the edge and broke the camel's back. You had a bunch of issues with poor journalism before (see, Doritosgate or something similar), a group that was more interested in pushing political beliefs that discussing games and a huge amount of resentment from the audience.
The fact the media covers this sort of stuff in such a biased and often hateful way is symbolic of a press that's become a clique and doesn't represent the population at large.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXZY6D2hFdo&app=desktop
...they suggested it was that a few women disrespected their market, trolled millions of people (including women gamers), made claims of abuse with feminist ideology, violated their own rules for money in design of their own games, and were possibly using the claims to get attention to their games. Never heard any of that in original reporting on major sites and that's why I was originally confused about why so much hate came their way.
Not saying this is true of anything referenced in the above article. Just telling readers to be aware that there's at least two trends going on:
1. People, including & especially women, being harassed online with any number of bogus justifications covering up bullying. It's a larger problem & the justification (eg feminism) rarely is the real issue.
2. A tiny portion of women, who may or may not represent most feminists, getting slammed online for using bullying and media manipulation to push their politics or products. I say media manipulation because I almost never see major media report calling it out even when it's obvious. Reporting is often one-sided, possibly due to risk of losing business if their image is seen as discriminating against women. I think one can argue against specific women's claims without hating on women in general.
So, we have two problems. One gets all the attention. Each time, the recipient of that abuse spins it as them being in a minority, having certain attributes, etc as evidence there's a large scale attack on those things. Reality is human nature is at work with any group competing with others and lack of accountability letting some be abusive. Certainly prejudices in there to combat but it really boils down to abusive people enabled by the Internet. Happens offline, too, as anyone who went to school, a bar, a football game... anything... should know.
Other problem we should watch out for and call out when we see it. That problem is not limited to feminist: any members of a group that can make itself look the underdog or target of abuse can use that as leverage in promoting politics or themselves. This happens across the board. Relevant to this thread, that many feminists do it certainly contributes to attacks on those individuals and might contribute to attacks on others posting similar idea. The troll throws them all in one mental category and attacks at the first sign of the same ideology in a new person.
So, that's my two cents on the problem.