CW: sexual abuse

I don't think the WoW community is drastically different from everything else that's been getting tossed over with sexual abuse lately, with survivors coming out but it's the community I have the most experience with in my years as a writer

None of it is surprising because when you have an insular community built around a game, where employees of the company who makes said game, where the company reinforces toxic, misogynistic portrayals of women, where community members cover for high profile people consistently

What you're doing is creating a culture, much like a bacterial culture, that creates tons of opportunities for people to abuse others, particularly women. the WoW community has long-standing misogyny problems, and at the same time reveres high profile people shitting on others

Nothing about Method protecting a culture that abetted an abuser is striking, it is almost expected when the entire community puts people who are good at a video game on a pedestal, undermines marginalized people (particularly women) and even Blizzard does the same

As I've saying for years, misogyny and abuse are symptoms of a much larger issue systemically we have with hating women and other marginalized identities. Cultures that breed these attitudes attract and proliferate people who take advantage of it, who thrive in these conditions.

When a game is made by people who routinely abuse their fans, when the community takes cues that women are less than trash, when no one looks out for them, when no one believes them, when we protect well known people, then abuse happens

I am glad I got out when I could. I had my own brush with years-long stalking from someone I met in the WoW community, who frequented MMOC's forums with like-minded guys. I got death threats from talking about sexism in a fucking video game

WoW community didn't come upon this in a vacuum, this is gaming culture and societal culture at large, but it didn't help that the community did very little to combat these attitudes and routinely supported people who expressed these attitudes widely. It is unsafe and insular.

Being a queer woman in the WoW community for years SUCKED. It SUCKED. I hate that people get protected/lauded for being "good at raiding" or good at PVP, or Blizzard employees or theorycrafters and then everyone is SUPER SORRY when they get outed as an abuser.

People who flourish in misogynistic communities are never going to be fucking good people.