The men at GamerGate claim that they are acting in the name of ethics in journalism.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Being a woman in the gaming community is as hard as being a newbie who chooses Dark Souls as his or her first video game. On Advanced mode. While being trapped in a dungeon. But there are some members of the beautiful sex who decided to fight against the misogyny of the system. The result? GamerGate managed to get a woman fired because she was a feminist.
Allison Rapp managed to get herself a job as a spokesperson for Nintendo soon after she graduated college. She did some moonlighting on the side, on a fake name, because she needed to pay off her student loans. And that’s what got her fired. At least, that’s what Nintendo is claiming.
But any person who has been watching the news in the past two weeks knows that this is not the main reason for which she was asked to pack her bags.
It all started when Nintendo decide to localize the latest installment of “Xenoblade Chronicles X” and “Fire Emblem Fates.” A game is “localized” when the company decides that certain features must be adapted to the culture of the respective land.
In this case, due to all of the feminist protests in the United States, Nintendo decided to remove the “boob slider” option from Xenoblade. The feature allowed players to modify the size of a character’s breasts according to their preferences.
And even though Allison Rapp had nothing to do with the modification, she became the target of internet hate and GamerGate. The latter is an online community of males that fight to preserve the values of gaming against the feminists that want to take over the industry.
And they are quite resourceful when it comes to destroying somebody’s career, as Rapp has seen for herself.
In order to get retribution for the unwanted localization, the bully group started digging out past information about the former Nintendo employee. And they found a paper that Rapp wrote back in 2011 when she was still in college.
The paper dealt with the way in which Japan oversexualizes teenage girls. Her argument was that the entire phenomenon is a part of Japan’s tradition and that the United States should not try to force its moral ethics upon another culture.
From there to being accused of pedophilia and sexual deviancy was just a step. Rapp’s reputation was dragged through the dirt, and Nintendo refused to comment. That is until Wednesday when the woman was fired because of her moonlighting.
GamerGate managed to get a woman fired, and they sent Anita Sarkeesian from “Tropes vs. Women” into hiding after threatening her because of her feminist views. Of course, the latter is now back doing what she loves.
Image source: Wikimedia