[Lorric]

There's some extreme cherry picking going on with those quotes. Context really matters here, and I suggest anyone who is interested in this part of the conversation should read the whole thing:

http://talesofgrim.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/in-defence-of-rape/

It's also an interesting read purely on its own merits. He asks you a lot of questions. I suppose we'll all have different answers to those questions.

[Grizzly]

actual feats of manipulation, lying, cheating, sabotage,

Even after repeated inquires, these claims stand baseless. I am sorry Luis, but since you have repeatedly tried to redirect away from this, I have no further reason to engage with you.

[Luis Dias]

I read it and it was so asinine, so shamelessly selective that I tried to be generous in ignoring it as a lapse of mind on his part. The kind of witch hunt with a microscope to see if someone suffers some kind of thought crime or whatever is appalling, downright totalitarian, and one of the biggest things that are driving people up the wall regarding this new feminist wave.

I repeat again, the writer of that post was defending the usage of rape as a fiction tool. Even if this ideology has wretched your sense of generosity and good faith towards this writer to its usual psychopathic standards, even if you can bring yourself to be righteously indignated for this post, to go ahead and defend its portrayal as rape apologism is beyond the pale. For all the moral righteousness that people are so adamantly trying to uphold around here, this failure of basic common sense is duly noted.

Even after repeated inquires, these claims stand baseless. I am sorry Luis, but since you have repeatedly tried to redirect away from this, I have no further reason to engage with you.

And people still defend this ideology of hatred and division, even though its effects are all here for everyone to see them.

The most ghastly part of that last comment is of course that I have been generously expressing myself for the course of the last pages and this is the **** I get from you. No, you're right, you should go the **** away, I don't have anything more to say to you.

[Grizzly]

And people still defend this ideology of hatred and division,

wait what? What ideology?

[The E]

Here is my list of ethical infractions:

- a wave of offensive and idiotic "gamers are dead" articles

Not an actual ethics violation. Writing opinion pieces you disagree with has been a staple of journalism for a very long time.

- inability to separate gaming culture from trolling/4chan/anti-feminist culture and unfairly associating the two

Not an actual ethics violation. Just an opinion that can be held by reasonable people.

- https://i.imgur.com/2o6lNXc.jpg  <-- this ****ing picture showing certain people from big tech/gaming media to be major assholes

Still not an ethics violation.

- political/social ideology or favoritism being pushed into gaming news (this one is a bit debatable, but it is certainly a valid concern)

Having opinions is not an ethics violation.

Seriously, what do you people think "journalistic ethics" means? Here's a hint: It does not mean that journalists are forbidden from writing pieces a portion of their audience disagrees with.

[Luis Dias]

Stop talking to me Joshua.

[666maslo666]

Seriously, what do you people think "journalistic ethics" means? Here's a hint: It does not mean that journalists are forbidden from writing pieces a portion of their audience disagrees with.

Regarding my last point, pushing political / social opinions / favoritism into your articles is a journalistic ethics violation. I dont consider people who do it journalists, just glorified blog writers. Journalism should strive to be objective and unbiased. Label your opinion pieces clearly and then you can vent there. Also if you write an especially dumb opinion piece you can still be liable.

The rest arent violations of journalistic ethics, but violations of ethics, professionalism, basic research and good manners in general. I do believe that the original specific claims behind gamergate (i.e. Zoey Quinn being unfairly favored) do not seem to be substantiated by actual hard evidence, and if it ended there then I would be more on the anti-GG side. Not so with the stupid reaction of gaming press that followed.

[The E]

Regarding my last point, pushing political / social opinions / favoritism into your articles is a journalistic ethics violation. I dont consider people who do it journalists, just glorified blog writers. Journalism should strive to be objective and unbiased. Label your opinion pieces clearly and then you can vent there. Also if you write an especially dumb opinion piece you can still be liable.

You do know that you've just said that no journalist working today would be "ethical" according to your definition, right?

The rest arent violations of journalistic ethics, but violations of ethics, professionalism, basic research and good manners in general.

No, the rest are opinions you disagree with. Learn the difference.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I read it and it was so asinine, so shamelessly selective that I tried to be generous in ignoring it as a lapse of mind on his part. The kind of witch hunt with a microscope to see if someone suffers some kind of thought crime or whatever is appalling, downright totalitarian, and one of the biggest things that are driving people up the wall regarding this new feminist wave.

"Shamelessly selective"? You are capable of reading, yes?

As to rape?

Rape or attempted rape is a ****ing awesome plot element, one of many.

Rape can place a character in jeopardy where the readers’ care about what happens, without necessarily taking the character out of the story. It’s a threat with implications, but not as final as death.

Rape can have interesting knock-on effects on a character’s relationships and their relationships with each other. If it does happen how does the character’s lover react? If their lover was the rapist, how do things change? Can you use this as a springboard to explore abusive relationships? Can love emerge from a violent encounter?

What if a pregnancy occurs from the rape? How hard is it for the character to endure that? What’s the effect on the father? The child? Nature or nature? Bad seed? Does the mother resent the child? Are they given up? Do they mistreat them through seeing the rapist whenever they look at them?

How does the event change the people involved? Is the rapist remorseful? Does the victim hate themselves or grow stronger? Does it change how they’re perceived? Can we use it as a springboard to examine the sexual culture in the story? Think about the differences in cultural reactions between, say, Arab/Muslim and Caucasian/Secular societies to rape even today. (Links added because someone played the racism card).

If we’re writing erotica? Well, depending which study you read somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of women have rape fantasies. I’ve no idea what the figure is for men and studies are probably wildly off due to the danger of saying so. Forced sex, rough sex, transgressive sex? These things are all wildly popular though – as fantasy. Much more popular than they are to perpetrate ‘for reals’.

I'll give you and Lorric a hint: those statements are still offensive in context. You can make an argument that rape is a useful storytelling tool without being offensive. Criticizing this particular way rape was defended is not saying that rape is off-limits to all writers in perpetuity.

I repeat again, the writer of that post was defending the usage of rape as a fiction tool. Even if this ideology has wretched your sense of generosity and good faith towards this writer to its usual psychopathic standards, even if you can bring yourself to be righteously indignated for this post, to go ahead and defend its portrayal as rape apologism is beyond the pale. For all the moral righteousness that people are so adamantly trying to uphold around here, this failure of basic common sense is duly noted.

"Criticizing someone I agree with is beyond the pale!" This failure of basic common sense is duly noted.

And people still defend this ideology of hatred and division, even though its effects are all here for everyone to see them.

"Wouldn't it be nice if our fiction was more diverse, and catered to a wider range of audiences?"
"Why are you so DIVISIVE and FULL OF HATRED?"
Sorry, not seeing the connection.

The most ghastly part of that last comment is of course that I have been generously expressing myself for the course of the last pages and this is the **** I get from you. No, you're right, you should go the **** away, I don't have anything more to say to you.

"Generously expressing myself" != "providing evidence to back up my claims". But then, you're not real big on "evidence", are you?

[666maslo666]

Regarding my last point, pushing political / social opinions / favoritism into your articles is a journalistic ethics violation. I dont consider people who do it journalists, just glorified blog writers. Journalism should strive to be objective and unbiased. Label your opinion pieces clearly and then you can vent there. Also if you write an especially dumb opinion piece you can still be liable.

You do know that you've just said that no journalist working today would be "ethical" according to your definition, right?

The rest arent violations of journalistic ethics, but violations of ethics, professionalism, basic research and good manners in general.

No, the rest are opinions you disagree with. Learn the difference.

Not true, journalists should write in an objective manner and failure to do so is a failure of journalistic ethics. Whether it happened in gaming journalism is an open (and important) question, tough. It is generally ok to be subjective in opinion pieces.

Yeah, it is my opinion that anyone who advocates bullying in tweets and anyone who retweets/likes it is a moron of the highest order, should not be in gaming press, and deserves the full wrath of gamergate-associated hate machine and then some. It is also my opinion that journalists who write idiotic inflammatory opinion pieces about "gamers are dead" should be looked at with suspicion by the broader gaming community, to put it lightly. Those journalists who go out of their way to paint gaming culture as deeply misogynistic and hateful (based only on a few death threats literally anyone could send and 100% will send when you paint yourself a juicy target) are either very misinformed or purposefuly write clickbait. It is also my opinion that calling someone a rape-apologist for thousands of your followers is not ethical (in a normal, not journalistic sense) when the article in question was maybe a bit controversial for feminists to swallow but no rape apology, and even posed some thoughtful questions.

[Lorric]

Luis wasn't talking to you AdmiralRalwood. He was talking to -Joshua-, who was saying he (article writer) was a rape apologist because of those quotes.

If you don't think he's a rape apologist then there's no problem with you. At least as far as I'm concerned anyway.

[Grizzly]

Luis wasn't talking to you AdmiralRalwood. He was talking to -Joshua-, who was saying he (article writer) was a rape apologist because of those quotes.

I did not say that, specifically. I said that in the context of those quotes, calling someone a rape apologist is understandable and not such a henious crime as

actual feats of manipulation, lying, cheating, sabotage,

And I fail to see how the above tweet is any evidence towards those claims.

[Phantom Hoover]

I'll give you and Lorric a hint: those statements are still offensive in context. You can make an argument that rape is a useful storytelling tool without being offensive. Criticizing this particular way rape was defended is not saying that rape is off-limits to all writers in perpetuity.

Though you have of course argued for exactly that in past discussions.

[666maslo666]

Rape or attempted rape is a ****ing awesome plot element, one of many.

Being so emotionally charged and with lots of implications to explore, yes it is. And compared to lets say, assault or murder it is quite underutilised in the media, games included.

Can love emerge from a violent encounter?

IMHO the situation of someone being raped by someone they love and all the situations and coping stemming from that is almost a goldmine for storytelling. So it is certainly an interesting question.

If we’re writing erotica? Well, depending which study you read somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of women have rape fantasies.

Rape being quite highly popular sexual fantasy and in erotica implies that it could be an interesting topic in games, too. I agree with that.

So as I said, this "in defense of rape" article is maybe hard for hardcore feminists to swallow but there is not really any actual rape apology in there, and IMHO stuff like that is needed to counteract the view that rape is not OK to depict almost never.

[Lorric]

Luis wasn't talking to you AdmiralRalwood. He was talking to -Joshua-, who was saying he (article writer) was a rape apologist because of those quotes.

I did not say that, specifically. I said that in the context of those quotes, calling someone a rape apologist is understandable and not such a henious crime as

actual feats of manipulation, lying, cheating, sabotage,

And I fail to see how the above tweet is any evidence towards those claims.

Oh, okay.

Does that mean you yourself don't think he is a rape apologist?

[The E]

Not true, journalists should write in an objective manner and failure to do so is a failure of journalistic ethics. Whether it happened in gaming journalism is an open (and important) question, tough. It is generally ok to be subjective in opinion pieces.

How do you write an "objective" review of a game? A book? A music album? Subjectivity is always a factor here, and if a writer thinks certain aspects of a work are problematic, he or she has the right to write about them. Whether or not you agree with the writer is up to you, but voicing an opinion in the context of a review or an opinion piece is not an ethics violation.

[Scotty]

Jesus ****ing Christ people.  This thread is now closed for a period of 24 hours so people can chill the **** out about it.  Everyone in this thread will take a moment to start over when the thread re-opens.  Anyone who immediately leaps back into this He Said, She Said bull**** will immediately be given formal warnings for the first infraction, and a warning level high enough to warrant moderated posting for the second.

God damn.

[Scotty]

Thread provisionally reopened.  Warnings will be handed out for failure to heed the warning in the previous post.

[Grizzly]

As this thread now involves gamergate, here's some links on it, all from the same website:
Gamergate's achievements
Common Gamergate misconceptions
"Gamers are dead" article analysis

In addition to that, both Polygon and Eurogamer have denounced Gamergate in between this topic's closing and re-opening.

[Lorric]

There's an immense amount of links here:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.860762-GamerGate-Discussion-Debate-and-Resources

Particularly in the second post.