*TW FOR RAPE*

This is a fucking great article by Patricia Hernandez (whom I respect so fucking much for putting this out into a clearly hostile environment with her real name and everything, holy fuck that is brave). I’d describe it as Bow, N-gger kind of new games journalism but twice as brutally emotional and also about rape culture.

If you don’t want to waste a day in blind rage over the words of internet strangers, however, I’d recommend avoiding the comments section. In retrospect the backlash was fairly predictable, but I guess hanging out on tumblr (which, interestingly, has managed to create a fairly safe space for marginalized groups) has led me to believe that we’re further along on this issue than we really are. For the most part, people responded pretty viciously - lobbing insults like ‘drama queen’ (without seeing the inherent misogyny in a female-gendered insult dohoho), questioning whether the author had actually been raped or not, and most of them believing it’s pure coincidence that these issues are typically (albeit not always) female-specific.

It’s pretty awful to see so few taking this article and learning something from it (I know I sure as fuck did). It’s depressing to see people clearly ashamed of their actions, but only digging their heels in further - the rage of Caliban seeing himself in the glass etc etc. It’s frustrating and miserable, but I’m immensely glad for its existence nonetheless; even if not a single person came away from it with a broader understanding of their place in rape culture as a gamer, it’s good that it was explosive. Gaming communities frequently serve as safe spaces for misogyny and rape culture, and until those spaces can be broken down completely, they should be disrupted at any opportunity. Even if no one came away a better person, I hope this article fucked up their day.

it’s like it was made for me just for me