On February 11, 2015, legislation & Order SVU aired an episode “ripped through the headlines” of GamerGate, centered on the harassment of feminists in video video video gaming and having a character that is central transparently drawn from aspects of Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and Brianna Wu. That is its tale.
I wish to start by stating that in university I became a die-hard fan of Law & Order, both the old initial show and SVU, and watched every single day. New episodes, re-runs on TNT, you label it. It had been a ritual for my freshman-year roomie and I also after supper. We have hot fuzzy feelings about legislation & Order. Or at the very least i did so.
The episode starts with a discussion between Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and her specialist by which Olivia covers the gender-typical “boy” behavior of her newly used son, Noah. Noah apparently is just a breaker-of-toys-and-teapots, destroyer of bookshelves, and generally speaking an all-around “boy, ” something about which both Olivia therefore the therapist laugh.
And my hackles seem to be up. This “boys may be boys” sort of attitude – although the episode will not really condone such excuses – is highly problematic, and supplying it as a good ghost of reason for outlandish and improper behavior just exacerbates the flagrant problems our culture already has with harmful gender stereotypes (against guys, women, and other-gendered people).
Needless to say, through the entire episode, we need to keep returning to Noah and exactly how Olivia is concerned that “this is their future. ” Yes, because no body would ever desire their kid to cultivate around be described as a dirty gamer.
The gaming convention attended by Fin Tutuola (Ice-T) just isn’t too much from the mark when you look at the grand scheme of things, at the least in terms of set dressing and basic sound degree (although I didn’t see almost enough gamer tees or cosplay – I only saw usually the one gold-garbed cosplayer). It had been a little little bit of a relief to note that the gamers depicted were all neat and didn’t cater to the 1990s caricature for the “gamer nerd. ” They did skip the mark only a little aided by the community sea that is anti-feminist, though…
Within the episode, two guys approach a lady at a booth with A sarkeesian-esque video clip behind her, and straight away start referring to “feminazis. ” The woman’s reaction, bracketed by suggestions to “Get away from right right right here, ” is really a weird that is little. She asks “What, might you kiss me personally? Are we planning to kiss? ” with apparent sarcasm. Issue rubs me personally the incorrect means, as it presumes an even of intimate engagement that seems extremely away from spot, offered just exactly exactly how utterly terrified nearly all women could be inside her place. But that fear doesn’t actually show up to the scene that is next where she’s assaulted in a plywood restroom by the two males.
I’m also off-put because of the juxtaposition regarding the attack using the crowd cheering during the shooter competition. Yes, the sound covers the noise associated with the attack (helping to make feeling), nevertheless the fast cuts between your two scenes makes an explicit connection between the electronic physical physical violence associated with the game therefore the genuine physical violence happening within the restroom. That’s where We have a challenge. To tie the 2 together would be to inherently blacken all gamers – or at the very least all gamers who play violent games – as prospective assailants, chanting savages whom just require the right trigger (as they say) to cause them to tip within the edge that is proverbial.
I’ve written elsewhere regarding how here simply is not a justifiable instance for violent games causing real-world physical physical violence, and you can find a variety of tests by other people more qualified than We making the exact same instance. The episode, though it might have a noble http://www.mail-order-bride.net/peruvian-brides central objective in curtailing GamerGate and similar motions, does not do any gamers, feminist or elsewhere, any favors by dredging that right right back up.
Nor does the discussion between Fin and Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) by which she asks if he’s “so addicted” to games that he “has to relax and play appropriate this 2nd, ” after remarking that she does not know how he can go homeward through the night and play those “shoot-em-up games. ” ok, thus I recognize that the typical demographic for SVU includes individuals like my mom, would you maybe maybe not play games, however the amount of pandering to negative stereotypes in this episode passed saturation point at about 15 minutes in. Many people whom enjoy winning contests get house and – gasp – play games. Like everyone else, dear viewer of SVU, are sitting in the home and tv that is watching the exact same length of time. As a symptom of some sort of horrible anti-social tendency, despite the fact that you are even more passively staring at a screen than I – the gamer – am while you might admit that you’re addicted to tv, relatively few people are going to point to it.
In addition it does not assist that SVU is creating acronyms. FALs – Failures-At-Life – are maybe maybe maybe not a thing that is internet. The friendly GG (“good game”) – but it’s one that just sounds idiotic to anyone familiar with gaming or internet culture it’s a cute attempt by the writers to make up acronyms to mimic gamer culture dialect – LoL, GTFO, DIAF, AFK, FPS, RPG, RTS. Also “troll behind their computers”? Perhaps maybe Not quite right, but near, i assume. At the least they know what SWATting and doxing are. (I’m not really likely to deal with RedChanIt. )
Sarah (the victim that is first additionally describes her assailants as immature white guys without any life, whom demonstrably don’t move out to see the sun’s rays (she emphasizes their extreme pallor). It’s a reassuring label, considering that you can find a number of gamers hostile to feamales in video video gaming that are otherwise apparently well-adjusted males in jobs, wives to their 30s, young ones, etc. To perpetuate the concept that only 20-something, socially-awkward uber-nerds have the effect of harassment is always to blindly disregard the truth ( although they are typically white, and obviously lack some amount of readiness).
Raina Punjabi (Mouzam Makkar), a fictionalized but apparent fusion of mostly-Sarkeesian-with-some-Quinn-and-Wu, may be the main target of this episode and it is the lead designer (perform some article article writers even understand just what this means? We question it) of a business called Amazonian Warriors (uh huh). We ended up beingn’t pleased with the episode’s caricature of gamers, and I’m additionally unhappy about its caricature of feminist gamers.
Additionally, i possibly could did with no fiance’s insistence that “I informed her this might take place. She’dn’t listen. ”
Because obviously some guy has to understand a lot better than she does. We also didn’t appreciate – after all – the forced “confession, ” which, although built to create pathos when it comes to target, actually just served to reiterate the type or sort of misogynist crap being promoted by real individuals. Specially when, during the final end, she says, “Women in video gaming. Exactly just What did we expect? ” and then quits, stating that “they already won. ” It reifies the image that ladies like Sarkeesian “have this that is coming them, whether or not they’re eventually rescued additionally the perpetrators delivered to justice. And that is horrifying and deeply, profoundly saddening.
Overall, the understanding that is generaland consequently depiction) of internet and gamer tradition is just a bit pathetic. Fulfilling in a relative straight straight back alley? No hacker would accomplish that. They meet online. Hence… internet culture. But i guess that does not alllow for good tv.
Neither does the everyday truth of just what it’s actually like to be a feminist in video video gaming. It really isn’t about big, dramatic assaults like being SWATted or getting your launch message sabotaged by crazy individuals (actually, just how many of us have provided launch speeches? I’m guessing not so many) or being kidnapped. Yes, Sarkeesian’s speaks have now been targeted with bomb threats and threats of massacres, but GamerGate is not pretty much Sarkeesian, Quinn, and Wu.
GamerGate is all about them, however it is additionally about every single other feminist gamer (male, female, other) on the internet and behind the keyboard and system screen. GamerGate is mostly about silencing voices that don’t comport with a tremendously particular and fundamentally conservative ethos covered up within the fictional construct of exactly exactly exactly what “gaming” and “gamer” designed in the 1990s, an uber-masculine valorization maybe not of physical physical violence, by itself, but of machismo and energy.
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