How far have you been outside of your own shoes?

You won't get alot of answers because from what I have seen of the anti-socila justice crowd which is made up of many GG'ers and right wingers with libertarian thoughts, the very concept of privilege is an affront to them.

The only time you see them acknowledge privilege is when talking about class and then they go on to label those that are pro social justice as being privileged white whiny college liberals because if there is one thing we know its that being pro socila justice and white means you're a race traitor of some sort.

They are quick to label Briana Wu as privileged but quick to cry about the privilege of being a male gamer and being able to blend into the crowd. The same rhetoric has been used against Zoey Quinn. Apparently you need to be suffering through the throes of a Somalian famine in order to talk about privilege.


Having said all that. This is my background. Grew up in Africa, Nigeria specifically. Been gaming since I knew how to. My family is very academically inclined o education was top priority as you would find in a lot of African "middle class" households. Note that our middle class is basically the western lower class so even though I can say I was a lot more privileged than many Nigerians growing up, I was nowhere near what you would call spoiled or even wealthy.

Anyway, I've lived through sectarian violence between Christians and muslims in a relatively religious nation. I've seen someone get beheaded for their faith and have lost people to this violence. Still I know that I'm a lot more privileged than a huge subset of the population. My parents always made sure I knew I was a privileged child, healthy and bright. Being a man in such a society is a plus. They never let my younger sister play video games even though she wanted to. That was seen as a boys thing.


20 years later I moved around the globe to England and North America. The dynamics changed from being a relatively first class citizen in my country to a 2nd class citizen in others. That was when I became conscious of divisions across racial lines and was well aware of my difference from the default. Funny enough, while back in Nigeria, most of the media I consumed was western so from the games to the movies and ,most of the music,it was mostly whites and made for and by whites.

We had and still do have women trying to lighten their skin tone to mathc European standards via bleaching. The kids are adopting norms they see from tv and learn that the blacks over in the west are thugs becuase that is what is exported as black culture.

And these same attitudes are seen in games. The black males are the hulking beasts and rarely get characterization other than the brute. The women serve as motivation for the male protgaonists and even when they dont, they have to be these hyper sexualised vixxens all with the same painted on wraps for clothings and armour designs with impossible symmetry.

/r/AgainstGamerGate Thread