This whole gamergate thing paints all male gamers as thugs.

Female gamer here. I certainly haven't recently seen evidence to the contrary - At least, not when it comes to this issue.

But if you want to change the video game industry, you have to change the other industries as well.

You have to start somewhere. Does that mean that Gamers are just NIMBYs? "we see there must be a change, but do it somewhere else first"?

"But it's about Ethics in Journalism!" (edit: yes I know you did not say this) Yeah fucking right. The Zoe Quinn "sex scandal", which on the scale of conflict of interest BARELY FUCKING REGISTERS, is just used as an excuse, a façade. I wonder how many Death threats that Brian Williams has received so far? And HE was the head of a nightly news broadcast, people like Anita Sarkeesian aren't even on the same PLANET, let alone in his LEAGUE.

The people making the threats are psychopaths, and do not speak for all gamers. They see the video game as a sacred cow that is being attacked by feminists. So they make threats on the feminists instead of engaging them in polite debate.

And the reason they continue to do so is because they are given tacit permission to represent you from the vast swaths of gamers who say nothing. Every time someone does not speak up against these radical people and continues to let the circlejerk happen you risk peoples lives. Real people.

but #notallmen have the stones to put these people under the magnifying glass and show them for who they are - Damaged people looking for a reason why they feel hated, why they hate their life, themselves, so much. People who are so messed up and who feel so out of place in society that when their only escape is shown for the problematic fantasy world it is, their response is to turn to violence.

But it's about Ethics in Journalism.

Feminism has its problems. The sort of extreme people who run the Michigan Womyn's Festival and have a "womyn born womyn" policy (I.e. a trans-exclusion policy) are As bad as any of the people we're talking about right now. HOWEVER, and that is a big however, the basic core tenets of feminism are the sorts of things that would help the very people who are threatening women with death.

If you have ever felt inferior because you don't fit into what our society defines is a "stereotypical man", Feminism is your shit, my friend. The whole Idea that if you are not this man:

then you are not a man, relies on the idea that "femininity" or "Not manliness" is somehow superior. Feminism says "that's bullshit, manliness and not manliness are equal things".

If you have ever looked at this

and thought less of yourself, then Feminism is your Jam. because the implication that "nerdy people" are not just forever alone, but unworthy of love runs under the same implication that they are "lesser" just because they aren't "men".

Feminism says You gotta step up and look out for the people whom society treats as lesser. That runs for minorities, that runs for people being oppressed for what they have on (or don't have on), and any other thing you can think of. Are feminists good at this? Not always, not yet - there's a lot of really shitty people who call themselves feminists. But I don't judge all christians on WBC or Muslims on ISIS. Feminists doesn't do too badly for a movement that was generally co-opted at an academic level by some really hateful people for a while (hence the whole "Womyn Born Womyn" thing, and a general exclusion of the PoC experience at an academic level). Feminism is like the Churchill quote on democracy, in that way - It's the most problematic ideology, except for all the other Ideologies we've had.

I don't even give a shit if you don't call it feminism, because it's an "icky" word. Call it "egalitarianism" to impress your buds. Call it "I don't want to treat other people like shit, or be treated like shit anymore", because that's basically what it is.