Video gamers on the feminist frontline

Jemma Nott writes that Video gamers on the feminist frontlines.

A fierce debate over women’s participation in video game culture has erupted online. Known as “GamerGate”, it is a battle over power and sexism in video games.

Women now represent nearly half of those who play video games, and the traditional gamer identity is being challenged. The problem of sexism in video games is part of a wider problem of misogyny in society, and in the same way misogyny is being confronted in parliament or at universities, it is also being confronted in gaming.

The women critics have been threatened with rape and death, but not the men critics. This is the same traditional response of all patriarchal societies to threats—whether in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, DRC, UK, USA, etc.

What is lost is that GamerGate is just a widely publicised version of something that has been happening since feminism began — patriarchal society feeling threatened by the concept of cultural equality.

Men have been given a small space to rule over as compensation for loss of power in the rest of their lives: workplace, politics, culture. Like a rat defending their last bit of rotting cheese, men will fight tooth and claw to defend that rather than go after the big cheese in the elite's fridge. It is safer to do so.

We need to overcome what divides us as workers (racism, sexism, homophobia) before we can concentrate on overthrowing Capitalism. Capitalism needs sexism in order to survive.