Oh, a storm is threat'ning

My very life today

If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

- Rolling Stones (Gimme Shelter)

Gimme GamerGate
by
K. Magdelyn Bordeaux
[Super Genius]

For two months the phenomenon known as
GamerGate has scorched the interwebs. As a
partisan, Ive participated in the careening
storm thats ripped through the comfortable
cold war that simmered between those for
whom the term gamer is a pejorative (anti-
gamers), and the video game constituency who
so identify. In large part, GamerGate was an
organic response to, and in opposition against,
a concerted effort of self-style progressives to
infiltrate gaming in order to infuse games and
gaming culture with feminist political ideology.
As I have repeatedly written, #GamerGate is a
polite way of stating, Get your f*cking agenda
out of my face! But, more than that,
GamerGate has given venue for the expression
of protestation against a diverse range of
grievances in the gaming community that has
smoldered under intense pressure beneath the
surface of a false calm. GamerGate is messy
because it is a populist movement. The
opposition is focused, on message and
disturbingly Orwellian.
The anti-gamers have been good at controlling
the narrative to all of those outside the storm.
Their constant chant that GamerGate is a hate
movement created to attack women, while
demonstrably untrue, plays into the
mainstream political narrative currently in
vogue. The so called social justice warriors
intentionally confuse the terms feminism with
women and thereby try to conflate any
criticism of feminists/feminism as an attack on
women. While its true a few women have
been heavily and publically criticized, the
criticism has been directed at self-identified
feminist activists, i.e. Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe
Quinn, Leigh Alexander and Jenn Frank. These
women have been criticized, not for being
women, but for being activists pushing feminist
ideologies onto gaming
culture, and
insulting/attacking gamers.
Not well documented, but
truly fascinating is the
rabidity of the opposition to
GamerGate. Why have
anti-gamers so vociferously
attacked the movement?
The response by anti-
gamers have been filled
with extremist deflection,
misdirection, slander,
doxxing, bullying and flat
out lies. The anti-gamer
faithful view GamerGate,
rightly, as an attack on their
ideology. Anti-gamer
fanaticism is driven by the
realization that GamerGate
is not a discreet phenomenon limited to a small
subculture, but is symbolic of a much broader
rejection of the doctrinal underpinnings of
social justice, i.e. the tenets of radical
feminism and critical theory. Much to chagrin
of the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) crowd,
the opposition is just not coming from 4chan,
reddit and unsophisticates, but from educated,
articulate commentators whose analysis is
evidence driven and critical of SJW assumed
paradigms.
Large swaths of feminist progressive activists
view gamers as straight, white, heterosexual,
young men with a libertarian worldview, who
embrace traditional expressions of masculinity.
To SJWs, such a demographic is analogous to
Beelzebub in Christendom. This presumed
demographic is anathema to SJWs, who see
these characteristics as toxic. The SJW
worldview encompasses radfem concepts such
as patriarchy and privilege, and who find
men and traditional expressions of masculinity
to be problematic. They want to redefine
masculinity and shape the parameters of
acceptable discourse, thought and expression of
what it is to be a man. And much
like Christianity, the philosophical
underpinnings of the SJW belief
structure is dogmatic, inflexible,
and relies on faith based
assumptions that cannot stand-
up up to inquiry into its validity.
Many GamerGaters simply reject
SJW assumptions, including the
assumption that there is
something fundamentally wrong
with men and masculinity. This
rejection of orthodoxy fuels the
rage of the faithful. If one rejects
the premises underlying SJW
assumptions, a massive 404
Error Not Found appears in the
paradigms logic structure, and
thus the entire faith is debased.
It is the questioning of orthodoxy
that has enraged the opposition.
For SJWs, such a blasphemy is best crucified.