The Colbert Report: Gamergate with Anita Sarkeesian

1. Gamergate dishes out death threats. Significant numbers of white, heterosexual males are in revolt as women enter the online gaming space in record numbers. Calling these men trolls is an understatement — say women gamers, led by media critic and Feminist Frequency creator Anita Sarkeesian.

Case in point is this october 23, 2014 post about an invitation to Sarkeesian to speak at the University of Utah.

I was invited to speak at Utah State University on Wednesday October 15th, 2014 about women’s representations in video games. Sadly, the university received a series of emails threatening to commit “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if I was allowed to speak on campus. When USU and Utah police refused to screen attendees for firearms, citing the state’s concealed carry laws, I was forced to cancel the event. Below is a round up of media interviews I have done recently speaking about the threats in Utah, the epidemic of gendered harassment online, and the larger problem of sexism within the games industry as a whole.

Believe Women’s Stores; They Can Be Astonishing When Exercising Our Rights

Let me say that I’m pretty clueless on this one, not being a gamer. The closest I’ve come to death threats was being stalked and in police protection for a year because I participated in a televised panel in the 1970s where I was asked if I supported the Rose vs Wade decision. I said ‘yes’ with perhaps one more sentence about the famous Supreme Court Decision.

The following week a box was left on my doorstep containing the rope my stalker would use to hang me. This box was followed by one containing a bleeding decapitated animal with a large butcher knife — the same one he would use to stab me. The third box I took directly to the very supportive police lieutenant without opening it.

The night my stalker — now wearing a Halloween mask — flew across the windshield of my car as I back it out of a parking lot, my nightmare ended. I floored my accelerator and drove away, with him rolling off the hood.

Unlike those who accuse Anita Sarkeesian of making up the death threats for self-promotion, I know how zealous one’s opponents can be when the topic is feminism and women’s rights. Watch this:

Anita Sarkessian, Feminist Frequency speech at Portland’s XOXO Festival

The Deniers

As for the opposing forces, Breitbart London’s Milo Yiannopoulos writes in Feminist Bullies Tearing The Video Game Industry Apart:

The journalists who cover games and gamers are subject to similar peculiarities and challenges, which perhaps explains widespread frustration from players that every blog out there seems more concerned with policing misogyny and “transphobia” than reviewing the latest game releases. As a result, gaming sites and their readers have drifted apart in recent years. Journalists have sided with activists to pen soporific op-eds about the need for “equality” in video games, while the people who actually play games just want to know if the latest instalment is good value for money.

Sweden, comprising a constellation that also includes Finland, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands, leads the world in pursuing equality for women on every front. With great results, I will say. Sweden’s research and development government agency Vinnova, has commissioned a $37,000 US study to examine the prevalence of sexism in video games.

Even women can’t agree which video games are are sexist and which not. Case in point is Lara Croft.

Many women see Lara Croft as an empowering heroine. Others see her as a ‘sexist’ male fantasy. Read Forbes contributor Carol Pinchefsky’s A Feminist Reviews Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft.

Uber’s Proposed Attack on Pando Daily’s Sarah Lacy

2. Within the context of Anita Sarkeesian’s experiences, the bombshell news story by Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith about Uber’s SVP of business Emil Michael suggesting a $million strategy to personally attack journalists who oppose Uber’s business policies. In particular, Michael was talking about discrediting one journalist, Sarah Lacey, the editor of Silicon Valley website PandoDaily.

Buzzfeed writes:

Michael was particularly focused on one journalist, Sarah Lacy, the editor of the Silicon Valley website PandoDaily, a sometimes combative voice inside the industry. Lacy recently accused Uber of “sexism and misogyny.” She wrote that she was deleting her Uber app after BuzzFeed News reported that Uber appeared to be working with a French escort service. “I don’t know how many more signals we need that the company simply doesn’t respect us or prioritize our safety,” she wrote.

At the dinner, Michael expressed outrage at Lacy’s column and said that women are far more likely to get assaulted by taxi drivers than Uber drivers. He said that he thought Lacy should be held “personally responsible” for any woman who followed her lead in deleting Uber and was then sexually assaulted.

Michael was focused in proving one particular claim about Lacy’s personal life. Buzzfeed confirms that Uber’s Emil Michael had every reason to believe he was speaking’ off the record’. Journalist Michael Wolff confirms that he invited Buzzfeed and neglected to communicate the ‘off the rocord’ nature of the event.

As the story broke, Uber apologized for Michael’s comments and a representative also volunteered that Uber would never use its travel logs to intimidate or go after journalists. Buzzfeed punched back on that assertion, writing:

In fact, the general manager of Uber NYC accessed the profile of a BuzzFeed News reporter, Johana Bhuiyan, to make points in the course of a discussion of Uber policies. At no point in the email exchanges did she give him permission to do so.

Sarah Lacy Sounds Off

Reflecting on whether this latest Uber dustup will create any changes for the company and others in Silicon Valley, Lacy writes:

Sadly, I don’t see any reason to think it will. Unless forces more powerful than me in the Valley– or even Washington DC– see this latest horror as a wakeup call and decide this is enough. That the First Amendment and rights of journalists do matter. That companies shouldn’t be allowed to go to illegal lengths to defame and silence reporters. That all these nice words about gender equality in tech aren’t just token board appointments every once in a while. That professional women in this industry actually deserve respect. That they shouldn’t be bullied with the same old easy slurs about bitchiness or sexual objectification. That deep scary misogyny in a culture isn’t something that you hire a campaign manager to “message out” of a founder, nor is it something you excuse as genius at work. That there is a line someone can cross, even amid an era where the Valley believes founders can never be fired.

New York Magazine’s Annie Lowrey weighed in on the controversy with Acting Like Sexist, Threatening Jerks Not Quite Working Out for Uber.

Related: How Uber Is Changing Night Life in Los Angeles New York Times

WOW!!! All I can say is WOW!!! ~ Anne