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Chris Kluwe: Sadly, I'm not really that surprised, because I've been a gamer for a long time, and I've seen the message board flame wars that have erupted from year to year—and this is basically an extended version of a message board flame war. You have one group of people who think that they get to do whatever they want, simply because they want to do it, and then you have everyone else saying, "No, you can't do that, because it's harmful to people." And that's where the friction comes in.
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I think there are women and people of color on the gamergate side, but I don't think it's nearly as many as gamergate thinks there is, and I think that in the end it doesn't really matter what your idea is, if [you're] going about it the wrong way.Do you think this is just one turf battle in a larger war over real gender equality?
Basically for the entirety of human history, it's been a patriarchal society. It's been men who've have had the power. [With the rise of the internet], we're seeing that a lot more people are understanding that there are these power structures still in place that primarily benefit men, generally white men. And they're saying, "No, this isn't right. If we want to live in a free and open society, then everyone has to have the same chance."I think that a lot of the backlash that you're seeing to that is from men's rights activists—the "manosphere" is I guess their online term for it. It's basically a bunch of people who are afraid that if they let the girls into the clubhouse then somehow there's going to be less for them. It's almost like it's this gut reaction of "No, we can't have women involved, because what happens if a woman takes a job that was meant for me, because I'm a man?" And when you step back and look at it, that means that you're OK with a woman not having a job simply because she's a woman, and that's not right.
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Obviously it's something important that needed to happen—not Janay Rice getting hit because that is horrible. Humans beings are very visually learning. We tend to pick things up much faster if we see it—if we see an example—so I think for a lot of people, when they heard that Ray Rice hit his wife, in the abstract they were like, "Oh yeah, that's bad but how bad could it be?" But then when the video came out, and people actually saw it, now they have a concrete example in their minds.On Twitter, you have urged Redskins owner Dan Snyder to change the team's name. Snyder maintains there are many Native Americans who love his team. Is that a bit like gamergaters saying women support them?
For a long time, guys played video games that girls weren't generally interested in, and it wasn't generally a very safe place for women. But then people realized, "Hey, that's not right, it should change." And same thing with Dan Snyder. It's yeah, for a long time, this is what we've called the team and people were OK with it. Yeah, there were some people that were not OK with it, but they were just a small voice. And now more people are realizing that this is not OK, and therefore it needs to change. It doesn't matter how long something has been going on if it is ethically corrupt, or if it is not conducive to good human, societal relationships. Time is not a defense.At the same time, you've been criticized for offending people. Over the summer, a story came out about you wearing underwear that had a hole in it in the Vikings locker room. You pretended you were one of the Penn State sexual abuse victims. What was the deal with that?
Obviously that was in poor taste on my part, but the other thing is, the relationship I had with my strength coach was like Cards Against Humanity with warped senses of humor. We would make fun of each other, we would make jokes at each other, and to me that was one of those instances where it was like, "OK, he's a very staunch Penn State supporter, one of those guys who's like, 'Penn State can do no wrong. What are they doing to Joe Pa?'" And I'm like, that kind of blind fanaticism is never good, no matter who it's directed at. And so yeah, this was a horrible thing that happened, and turning a blind eye to it isn't going to help anyone.A lot of people hate when celebrities use their platform to talk about something bigger than themselves. Why do you think there are some people who just want entertainers to, as someone famously told the Dixie Chicks, "Shut up and sing?"
I think the underlying problem is the growing corporatization of our society and culture in general. Everyone wants to make the most money possible from the largest audience possible, and that means being bland and inoffensive and never possibly saying something that could upset someone. I think that's both a combination of unfettered capitalism and the rise of the internet. It's much easier to see someone saying something unpopular, which is great from an activist standpoint, but businesses are terrified of that, because it becomes very easy for them to be linked with one of their employees, or someone they are involved with, saying something.Follow John on Twitter.