n case y’all have missed it, Feministe has a thread on Fat Princess as well.
Naturally, there have come the apologists for the trolls, though it doesn’t (appear) to be as bad as the trolling Shakes and I got.
One fellow, named “Ryan” writes about Shakes’s trolling:
I’m saying she had it coming due to her approach to the situation. As opposed to this site and Mighty Ponygirl’s take on the situation which was a little better thought out and presented. I’m not talking about her weight or attractiveness as a person.. I’m talking about the lack of interest she seemed to have in taking the care to make her argument valid and attractive to people who may not already see things from her point of view.
My response, which I’m QFEing here.
You know, Ryan, here’s something that bugs me:
My site was trolled, too. Not as “badly” as shakes because I just shut down comments. Had I let them go, I would have had just as many nasty, abusive comments for daring to point out that Fat Princess used a game device that I found troubling. People felt that the best response was to hurl insults at me — insults about my (supposed) weight, some even went so far as to just write “FAT N-GGER BITCH” over and over again. (obviously, they didn’t censor it).
I wasn’t saying “This game is the most horrible thing evar.” I was basically saying “I find it disappointing that a game with such good core game mechanics felt the need to bash on women and the overweight by making them the butt of a joke.”
Where is the outrage at how I was trolled? If, as you say, my response was “a little better thought out and presented” than Shake’s angry response, why is it not only accepted but encouraged to come to my site and behave in such a way? The gaming community is way too eager to troll feminist blogs, even when said feminist blogs are, by their very titles, pro-gaming blogs. We were even trying to develop a new game in the comments before the thread got trolled, and that was completely shut down by a bunch of jerks who felt the need to hurl slurs and shut down any discourse about how a game might have troublesome imagery. Does that resonate with you? People who supposedly love gaming shut down a thread that was attempting to design a game.
They’ve done this with discussions of Resident Evil 5.
They’ve done this with discussions of Grand Theft Auto.
Nowhere on my site do I advocate the banning of the game, even those that I think are incredibly misogynistic. All I’m trying to do is create a space for like-minded gamers who wish to talk about games in a space that respects them.
For people who want to talk about gaming as a means exerting their privilege over women and minorities, there are roughly 2 billion sites on the internet that give them carte blanche to do so.
We don’t troll their sites, but they feel perfectly entitled to troll ours.
And yet, the question has again returned to, “what did Pony or Shakes DO to deserve this,” which is about as subtle as “Well, what was she wearing?” The question is not what we did or didn’t do to ‘deserve’ this sort of treatment. The question is why this sort of treatment is so widespread on the internet, and why not one major gaming site seems interested in combatting it.
I’m going to be relatively off-line for the next few days (personal stuff takes precedence), the trollage appears to be winding down (it’s amazing how quickly they’ll disappear once you take away their right to speak). I’m fine and dandy with ramping up moderation in the face of an attack, if they were here to argue in good faith, it would be one thing, but as I care about the community that I have (dare I say… lovingly?) fostered over the last year and a half, I’m in absolutely no mood to watch it be destroyed by a bunch of hooting dickholes.