Really? I never got that feel, except maybe a few (large number) from the GamerGate side who rail against feminists ruining everything, but then it’s hardly “all around”.
From those opposed though, I never got that sense. I mean, as a male, sometimes when feminist gripes come up, I personally feel a little insulted (#notallmales!)… for a moment, until I remember it’s not about me. In this case, the GamerGate debate, no, not even a little, to me, even though one of the seeds is people pointing out some subtly misogynistic tropes and the backlash towards that, the GG debate itself has clearly been about a specific group of douchebags and those who willingly align with them.
Some of the anti-GG-related discussions do diverge into broader feminist topics, as is natural to do once in a while in any topic (there’s still loads of inequality and consequences of past inequality simmering under the surface of our enlightened age, and women are half the population so… yeah, it’s going to come up now and then), and especially natural when there’s a misogynistic seasoning on the douchebags (and you then have people naively but innocently suggesting that you should just ignore them, that the real problem isn’t them but the failure of people bothered by them to reacting properly to it), but I never once have felt that this was trying to be turned into a “battle of the sexes” by both sides, even a bit. (Sometimes I’ve taken a slight amount of offense that the ‘socially awkward’ part is being stigmatized and demonized more than it already is, but again, then I try to remind myself it’s not about me.)
But that’s just me, maybe you feel this is brewing into an epic battle of the sexes. In my experience though, the ones who think most about a situation brewing into a race war are the ones who are the racists. … Wow, I just read that last line back and it looks like I’m totally slamming you and implying you’re a sexist, but honestly, that’s not what I mean. From what I’ve seen on your posts, you seem like a fair-minded and intelligent person (though I disagree and thus I hope you don’t take offense if I say I put you in the ‘innocent-but-naive’ category… not in general, but on this issue)… what I mean by the comparison is merely to point out how ridiculous the “this is turning into a battle of the sexes” idea is. When you have one group (GG) that have a lot of issues in that have a bigoted tinge to them, then, yeah, when people respond to that, to some people it might look like a battle of the sexes, or races, or whatever, and that one group can’t help but do it’s best to spin it that way… but really, it’s still a battle against bigotry itself.
