So I recently returned from the National Women’s Studies Association conference where I moderated a fantastic panel on gender in games – looking at perceptions of players, perceptions of developers, journalism media, and pedagogy through a feminist lens. It was warm and comforting. Really warm. Like, tropical island, sunning by the pool with a pina colada warm. Really. It was awesome.
The panelists were fantastic, the audience was supportive and interested, and no one left the panel feeling overtly threatened or attacked. It was a space where it was safe to talk about the threats faced by women in the gaming and tech industries in a real, honest way. It was a genuine discussion of ideas and innovations, and it reminded me that in spite of all the hatred and vitriol out there, there are a lot of people quietly doing good work.
What I’m afraid of is that those people will be driven away from the industry, whether they’re journalists, gamers, or academics, because of the kind of attitude of privilege and hostility that gave birth to GamerGate. Because, let’s be honest, it isn’t just about GG. Anita Sarkeesian was harassed before GG was a thing. Women were feeling marginalized, harassed, and ostracized by the heteronormative masculine practices of their companies and of cons long before GG. The “fake geek girl” produced a backlash against women in “geek culture” (including gaming) before GG.
GG isn’t some insidious new movement or suddenly-sprung-up cohort. It’s yet another symptom of a disease that has plagued the tech industry and geek culture more generally for decades. It’s part of a system designed by those in privileged positions who were not the ultra-privileged but were smart enough to create their own escapism. And now that the worlds they created (sci fi, fantasy, videogames) are no longer the realm of straight white male nerds, that space – that “safe” space – is being threatened.
This has been true since sci fi started becoming mainstream, since videogame consoles began to appear in the average household, and since it became worthwhile to reboot as major films comic book characters like Batman, Superman, and the Avengers. In other words, since the 1990s. It’s taken a long time for the facade overlaying this culture to rupture, but it has, and as more and more people partake in geek culture, the more the culture itself will shift, embracing the variance and diversity of its changing identity.
GG is, as more than one person has suggested, the alligator death-roll of “old” geek and videogame culture. It’s a last desperate attempt to keep the elements of a culture that used to represent “safety” to a select and homogenized group of people who no longer make up the majority of its members. The problem is not that those members feel safe, but that so many others do not feel safe, that the price of the “old” safety is the discomfort and harassment of everyone else.
The thing is, there can be many safe spaces within geek culture. There can be spaces that hold to the old “traditional” stories of gaming. There can be spaces that reject those traditions in favor of other, new stories. There can be spaces that allow for crossover between them. There can be space for all, if we are willing to shrink our own personal bubbles and share the couch.