This conversation has not always been done in ways that we personally may have wanted, but we have had productive dialogues with self-identified GamerGaters around these issues. We have seen this play out on Twitter, some better faith than others. Dialog is not about building consensus; it is about learning to take seriously what other people have to say. And for those who will never take our work seriously, who rage against the injustice of us being feminists who dare to do research that others (sometimes even people in the
games industry/journalists) might read and be convinced by—well that is not a position unique to GamerGate. Reviewers at journals often critique qualitative research in ways that unfairly compare it to quantitative research (though we do support the peer review process, when it works). Feminist research is rarely funded (at least in the U.S.), and questions of diversity and difference are always treated as peripheral and specialized in many of our home fields and even home departments. Feminist game scholars, really any scholars whose work that focuses upon diversity and difference (particularly if they are a member of a marginalized group), have always had to deal with more than our colleagues who deal with what are seen as more “neutral” topics. No one ever said this job was easy (except perhaps Scott Walker, (Herzog, 2015), and we hope that DiGRA members continue to treat these conversations as more central to the work we all do—whether you agree with what we have to say or not.
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