_The Pulse_ Gets It Wrong on #Gamergate

WHYY's The Pulse aired a show today about nerds, which is good. One of the segments relied on Brianna Wu for information about #Gamergate, which isn't. I submitted the following comment on their Facebook page:

Great that you've done an episode on nerds. But you shouldn't have relied on Brianna Wu for information on #Gamergate -- she's very much an interested party and has been a major part of the disinformation campaign about this movement, which feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers has described as "a consumer uprising" against unethical and authoritarian practices in video game journalism and criticism. (You can hear her discuss it at length here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e_jTwA_rg0) Contrary to the disinformation, Gamergaters are video gamers from all walks of life and of all genders, ethnicities, and political persuasions. They've received just as much harassment on line as opponents of #Gamergate, and quantitative studies have shown that tweets associated with the hashtag are no more likely to be abusive than tweets are overall. A particularly common form of abuse is anti-Gamergaters' "silencing" female, POC, and GBT Gamergaters by accusing them of not being who they say they are. A group of GGers targeted by this kind of abuse put together a video in response: "Giving Voice to the Voiceless: The #NotYourShield Project": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwGIHUCtjU

P.S. I had occasion to mention this piece in an interview appearing in the December 2017 issue of One Step Away, Philadelphia's street paper. I wrote, "I was proud of myself this year for achieving the degree of freedom from social anxiety sufficient to write a piece correcting misinformation about #Gamergate, even though many people I know might look askance at it."