Right, so this has been danced around for long enough. Many of the people who have argued against critics of #GamerGate are those that don't see themselves as being part of the abusive, disgusting people who use death threats - online, in person, and via phone calls - and the dissemination of harmful material in order to achieve their goals. Sometimes those people are actually pretty terrible, and either are in denial or simply don't see that they're misogynistic douches. But then there are a lot of people who align themselves with #GamerGate because they want things to change when it comes to games journalism, regardless of whether the Zoe Quinn stuff is true. Crying #NotAllGamers when people criticise the many, many harmful parts of #GamerGate doesn't help anything, though. No more than yelling #NotAllMen over women's discussions of the negative effect being around men has almost constantly on their lives. Nobody is saying all men are terrible, or all gamers. They're saying that the social construct of those identities is inherently flawed and that, in their experience, there have been plenty of examples of harassment and abuse coming from people who identify as those things. Not all gamers are of the more toxic side of #GamerGate, but enough of them are that, honestly, do you want to associate with the sort of people who threaten to kill someone for pointing out that games are kinda sexist sometimes?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
