Anita Sarkeesian Cancels Speech After School Shooting Threat At Utah State

Prominent feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian has officially canceled a speaking engagement at Utah State University after a threat was emailed to the school promising a mass shooting targeting her and anyone who attended the event.

The email said there would be “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if Sarkeesian’s speech was not canceled by the university, and goes on to detail exactly how the attack would be carried out.

“If you do not cancel her talk, a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby Women’s Center. I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs.”

Originally, despite the threat, Sarkeesian was still planning to go ahead with the speech, but after learning from campus law enforcement that Utah’s concealed carry laws meant it would be possible that guns would indeed be at the event, she changed her mind.

The threat is the latest in a series of escalating attacks targeting prominent female game critics and developers. Anita Sarkeesian and developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu have fled their homes in recent weeks after their personal addresses were posted online and death and rape threats were made against them. Sarkeesian has endured these kinds of attacks for years ever since her “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” video series was attempting to raise funding on Kickstarter. Recently, matters have escalated however, culminated in this exceptionally graphic and detailed school shooting threat. The “ Montreal Massacre” mentioned in the email refers to the crimes of Marc Lépine, who killed 14 women, injured 10 and also killed four men in order to “fight feminism” in 1989 before committing suicide.

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The obvious elephant in the room is that these threats and attacks against specific female developers have escalated as the popular #GamerGate movement has gained traction in the gaming community. The #GamerGate community is exceptionally defensive when being tied to “fringe” elements who directly threaten and harass women in this way, but it’s getting borderline impossible to extract what the movement claims to want to be with what it actually is.

Zoe Quinn was the figure who in effect spawned the hashtag movement, who accused her of sleeping with members of the games press for positive coverage for her game (when in reality the press members in question barely mentioned her game in passing, and did not review it). Developer Brianna Wu, who fled her house as recently as this week, was targeted by 8chan, the 4chan spin-off ousted from the site, because of her harsh words for #GamerGate and those who claim to march under that banner. And Sarkeesian has been a consistent target for years, and her repeated and public disdain for #GamerGate has escalated attacks on her as we see today.

While it’s true these threats aren’t being signed with a #GamerGate hashtag, we’re past the point of pretending that it’s a complete coincidence these threats have increased as #GamerGate members have gotten more fervent. The stated goal of #GamerGate, a movement concocted on Twitter TWTR -1.05%, Reddit and 4chan, is the pursuit of a more “ethical, professional and unbiased” video game press. Yet, whatever reasonable elements of the group there may be, some members have taken it upon themselves to threaten “unethical” females in the industry and everyone who supports them. This has happened so often and the threats made are so personal, graphic and unsettling, that it’s overshadowed anything that could have ever been productive about the movement. Whether or not the “goal” of #GamerGate was to literally chase prominent women out of the industry, that’s the effect its now having. Each day seems to bring a new low, and it seems like only a matter of time until a woman is physically harmed when someone follows through on one of these hundreds and thousands of threats. In Sarkeesian’s case, she wasn’t willing to risk speaking at an event that allows concealed weapons after the looming threat of a massacre.  It’s hard to find fault with that logic, unfortunately it comes with the side effect of the person who made the threat getting exactly what they wanted.

It’s no longer possible to defend #GamerGate. For every member that unequivocally condemns these sorts of attacks against women, there’s another explaining why it’s completely unrelated from the movement, while yet another is cheering the harassers on. #GamerGate is an amalgam of a million different goals raging from the valid (better disclosure!) to the insane (death to feminists!), and it’s become bloated and grotesque with hate. Perhaps it’s too bad the sane members of the movement are caught in this tidal wave, but there’s no avoiding getting swept out to sea at this point.

The police need to be heavily involved as these threats escalate. The games press needs to unite with fans to condemn this sort of thing outright, and not pretend that ethics in games journalism has absolutely anything at all to do with…whatever it is this has become.