The online consumer revolt known as GamerGate has officially invaded meatspace–and yes, this is of interest to Men’s Human Rights Activists, even those who don’t much like video games (although an awful lot of us do).
Last night, at restaurant Local 16 in Washington DC over 300 members of the online movement gathered together to discuss their love of games and resist the authoritarian hydra of radical SJWism hellbent on controlling every square inch of popular culture. Much to the detriment of the mainstream narrative put forth by outlets such as the USA’s ABC, The Washington Post, and other outlets, photographic evidence shows that excluding women and minorities was not on the menu.
Admittedly, however, diversity in hair dye was lacking compared to their philosophical opponents.
Instead, everyone was invited, even the curiously aggressive anti-gamergate columnist Arthur “The Mindkiller” Chu, a dogged, if not always coherent, critic of rational thought.
The event was organized by GamerGate luminaries Milo Yiannopoulos and Christina “Based Mom” Hoff Summers as a way for GamerGaters to meet, interact, network, and enjoy one another’s company. In case you’re new to GamerGate, the movement kicked off last summer as an investigation into corruption in games journalism and eventually exposed the radical feminist agenda of turning video game culture into a node for disseminating ideological feminist propaganda. The event went off without a hitch, despite repeated calls,Tweets, and emails made to the host venue by SJW’s demanding that the event be shut down, culminating in Arthur Chu’s final message, “It’s ending tonight.” Whatever Chu meant by that statement, he looked pretty stupid when after midnight an anonymous bomb threat brought in the police. Well, so much for going off without a hitch.
I highly doubt that Arthur Chu issued the threat and I’m inclined to believe it was the work of a third party troll, just as I’m inclined to think that the person who made the death threat against Anita Sarkeesian at Utah State was the work of a third party troll. Naturally we can’t expect the establishment media to report this threat, but what we can do is observe a familiar pattern, based on the experiences of CAFE in Toronto, last year’s first annual International Conference on Men’s Issues at St. Clair Shores, Zen Men’s Male Students In Peril conference last November, and the HoneyBadger Brigade’s recent travails at the Calgary Expo–the first people to have a pro-Gamergate presence in the real world were Men’s Rights Activists who came to say nothing except that gamers are awesome just the way they are and censorship is bad.
First they’ll slander our leaders and try to prevent venues from hosting our events. If that fails, they’ll either show up themselves to pull fire alarms or block entrances, or we’ll get anonymous death threats. While thus far no threats have lead to serious violence, it raises our security fees and forces us to take extraordinary measures to ensure that events go forward without disruption. Meanwhile the establishment media carries on if as we are the ones doing the threatening.
While this pattern can be discouraging, GamerGate has responded to the bomb threat by planning meetups in Sydney Australia, San Francisco California, and Boston Massachusetts. Instead of being dispirited, GamerGate took the bomb threats as a challenge, and is currently engaged in one thing that the Men’s Human Rights Movement (excluding India) has only recently begun doing itself: showing up, having fun, and if anybody asks, declaring your non-affiliation with radical ideological feminism. This is the non-feminist counter culture we need. Little additional work is required because totalitarian feminists will predictably show the wider culture just how tolerant and committed to diversity they really are. The key is to not let yourself be intimidated.
Unlike the Men’s Human Rights Movement, GamerGate has the advantage of being organized around video games, which are far more fun and sustaining than dreary discussions around domestic violence statistics, suicide rates, and male-only military conscription. I believe we stand to take a page from their playbook and whistle while we work.
“Based Mom” Christina Hoff Summers summed it up rather nicely, speaking to the gathered crowd of gamers:
The media campaign against gamers has astonished me, not because it was one-sided and recklessly wrong and stupid, but because of all of you. The gamers were the first group that I’ve seen that pushed back their plans to turn gamer culture into Oberlin College. You staged the first citizen’s uprising against the humor-impaired, check-your-privilege bullies. But I have to say, and I’m fond of saying, they made a big mistake when they took on the gamers, because you know how to slay a dragon. And you like to win.”
So there it is, folks. The rate at which the wider culture is waking up to the truth about intolerant gynocentric feminism is rapidly increasing, and as long as we show up, eventually we’ll turn the corner. If there’s a GamerGate meetup near you, I encourage you to go and have fun (so long as you have genuine interest in the subject and aren’t just there to proselytize). Our opponents’ chief weapon is a threat-narrative based on a nebulously defined “Other.” All we have to do is show up, self-identify as that Other, act like normal, healthy people, and before long the entire narrative sounds utterly ridiculous to the wider culture and falls apart. Once we disarm feminists of their best weapon our ability to advocate on behalf on men and boys will get a lot easier, as our philosophical opponents won’t be able to lean on the image of the threatening “Other” in the imaginations of the general public. They’ll have to discuss facts, and they’ll lose.
And hey, if feminists show up too, say hi, and invite them to actually debate us some time rather than hate on us.
I believe the MHRM in the West is at a similar stage in its development as the gay rights movement was in the 1980’s. On one hand homosexuality was still widely seen as deviant and threatening, yet everybody had a favorite band with a gay lead singer.
Most people born after 1980 regarded homosexuality as nothing particularly abnormal, and at some point in the 2000’s resistance to gay marriage seemed to crumble overnight. That’s not to say that campaigners for gay rights didn’t work their asses off, but the most important groundwork was already laid in the 80’s.
GamerGate gives people who care deeply about the problems faced by boys and men the opportunity to lay that sort of groundwork now. By showing that we, too, are human, and have the same type of real-world interests and concerns and hobbies that they do and by the way–men’s rights are human rights.
So show up. Smile. And if you see Milo give that beautiful man a friendly wink for me.
