I’m archiving here what started as a forum post.
CAVEAT: This is only partially related to the GamerGate affair, in the sense that it’s specular but not linked, if not because of the bigger themes of racism, misogyny and everything. So, Quinn is not involved, games are not involved, yet we see the EXACT same thing that happened on Quinn, yet this time the situation is specular in the sense that the supposed “feminist” target here is found “guilty”, instead of rising shields on her defense.
This requires to step slightly outside gaming and into literature, in particular the fantasy/sci-fi subgenre.
As in the Quinn case, but in much smaller proportions, this thing in propagating across forums and blogs. They even named it “Benjanungate”.
Two forums threads going on:
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/119265-benjanun-sriduangkaew-and-rotyh/
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/120249-requires-only-that-you-continue-to-read-this-thread-benjanungate-ii/
The gist is that a famous feminist blogger who used to write extremely vitriolic reviews of books, calling out the authors in kind of Sarkeesian way, if only a thousands times more bluntly and aggressive, was outed as being also a writer who’s now starting to get published. The two identities online were kept well separated, with the writer’s blog being instead extremely mild.
The point is: in this one case the smear campaigns were initiated by this supposed feminist, instead of against her.
Why is this important? Because it highlights the terms of the discussion, where this feminist battle crosses over to WRONG territory. For me it’s extremely confusing to differentiate where are the good arguments, and which battles are actually worth fighting. So seeing the mirror image of the ambiguous Quinn affair can help see where things that started good become instead very wrong.
Consider also that even if she’s considered on the “wrong” side pretty much universally, I still think there was a whole lot legitimate and interesting about what she used to write. Yet she falls in the category of “feminists we don’t need”. In the sense that she is the living proof that you can do a lot of wrong even if the principles were good and sound (just one, as an example, she often pointed to the “whitewashing” of book covers, where ethnic people were still made white to sell more books).
So she had merits, if you understood her angle. Yet she made everything possible so that you wouldn’t understand it. This is the problem with these kinds of feminists: they do everything possible to be misunderstood and be vitriolic. They antagonize. So theirs become gut (legitimate) reactions to otherwise complex problems. Yet a legitimate act isn’t automatically a good one. So is “feminism”, good principles that sometime only produce setbacks.
“the tactics she used don’t often change minds, they generally only serve to solidify stances.”
Bibliography:
http://requireshate.wordpress.com/
http://www.awesomedome.com/requires-only-that-youre-fake/
http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/1074745.html
http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/900453.html
http://azarias.dreamwidth.org/7186.html
http://laurajmixon.com/2014/11/a-report-on-damage-done-by-one-individual-under-several-names/
http://cloggie.org/wissewords2/2014/10/16/does-a-bee-care/
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7210592-fine-fine-thoughts-on-the-requires-only-that-you-hate-drama
http://creativedoubledipper.blogspot.ca/2013/05/cerulean-sins-chapter-47-triggers.html
http://ello.co/mamatas/post/cQb3OJi5-wI4TDe3Koq_ww
http://rcloenenruiz.com/2014/11/06/standing-up-and-speaking-truth
http://www.starshipreckless.com/blog/?p=9077
http://rachelmanija.livejournal.com/1161836.html
http://hesychasm.dreamwidth.org/266437.html
(probably more)
Also relevant:
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/5775/full
