Welcome to episode 24, which brings us to two years worth of content! This month, Les Filles discuss video games, video gamers, and the terrible things that have been happening the past month (months, years) to women in video games.
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After an ex-boyfriend launched an angry tirade against her online, supposedly exposing a potentially conflicting relationship between herself and a games journalist, Depression Quest developer Zoe Quinn found herself on the receiving end of doxxing, harassment, threats and accusations that she was public enemy number one in the battle to expose corruption in games journalism.
A debate on the subject soon followed, using the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate, although Quinn later exposed that as a 4Chan cover to harass her and like-minded women who dare to call out sexism in gaming (Anita Sarkeesian also found herself unable to return to her own home due to threats).
Feminist Frequency: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games- Women as Background Decoration 2
Trigger warning on these threats that drove Anita Sarkeesian from her home.
The Extinction Burst theory.
Games.on.net says people threatened by equality are not welcome.
Comics Alliance responds to GamerGate.
Magic: The Gathering and women WaPo article.
I’m only halfway through this episode, hopefully I’ll have more stuff to say after I listened to the whole thing. But in any case: Congratulations on two years of awesomeness! Also, seeing that next month’s October, does that mean we listeners are gonna get a second HANNIBAL episode?
Re: possible ideas for future episodes
Aside from the usual DEAR GOD PLEASE DO A SECOND HANNIBAL OKTOBERFEST, another geek thing I’d like to see the ladies talk about is comedy panel shows. I know there’s a whole lot of those out there, personally I’ve only watched a handful of episodes of Have I Got News For You (including the one in 2010 where Victoria Coren was one of the guest panalists and Benedict Cumberbatch the guest host), but I managed to obtain a lot of episodes of QI and watched them all at least twice (which basically covers Seasons A~J and part of Season K) plus the BBC Making-Of special called “QI Genesis”. QI is a really, really fun and educational show, I get to learn about a lot of obscure trivia while seeing how Stephen Fry interacted with all those panalists (most of them I think are British or Irish, but I know Rich Hall to be American — though he probably lives in the UK for many months of a year — and Katherine Ryan (debut: Season K) to be Canadian, so QI really fits the Anglo-Filles criteria in this way). A lot of gags still work when taken out of the show’s context, once I relayed one of Ross Noble’s stories he told on the show to my brother (we watch and read a lot of things together which helps the bonding process), the one where he was driving through a very long straight highway in Australia, and his car’s GPS simply told him to “Drive. Forward. For. Two. Days . . . Then. Turn. Left.” Not gonna lie, that made Eric laugh for two minutes straight with me joining in, and later we watched the episode “Incomprehensible” together.
So, yeah, those are my pitches for now: The 2nd Hannibal Oktoberfest, and one on QI (or just Stephen Fry in general).