BuzzFeed, the media company, has reportedly threatened to withdraw from SXSW, the March music and technology festival, over organizers decision this week to cancel two panels related to gaming and the harassment of women.
Last year, a discussion about women in gaming erupted in threats of violence against some of the most vocal female gaming critics, as I and others wrote about then.
That media coverage prompted a backlash from a wide swath of gamers who felt the media was oversimplifying their concerns and trying to sanitize gaming.
Some gamers rallied around the hashtag #GamerGate and a quasi-movement was born. Speakers, such as Anita Sarkeesian, canceled public appearances under threat of violence, as I wrote.
So it was brave and timely for SXSW to organize a panel on the issue: One was called Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games, which had experts on online harassment. The other, SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community, had speakers who were to present the other side of the debate, including the journalist integrity of gaming s journalists.
But now the festival has had a change of heart.
In a post on SXSW s site, Hugh Forest, director of SXSW Interactive, said threats of on-site violence and harassment led the organizers to cancel the panels.
Forest, in his note, said that SXSW prides itself for providing a big tent for a wide range of ideas but not at the expense of people s safety, adding:
Preserving the sanctity of the big tent at SXSW Interactive necessitates that we keep the dialogue civil and respectful. If people can not agree, disagree and embrace new ways of thinking in a safe and secure place that is free of online and offline harassment, then this marketplace of ideas is inevitably compromised.
Executives at BuzzFeed said in a letter to organizers that the organization would not attend the event unless the decision to cancel the panels was reversed, according to an article on BuzzFeed:
We will feel compelled to withdraw … if the conference can t find a way to do what those other targets of harassment do every day — to carry on important conversations in the face of harassment.
Salon s Mary Elizabeth Williams said in a post that SXSW was acting cowardly:
You shouldn t get to cancel a panel on how to create online communities that are moving away from harassment because of threats of violence and not issue a goddamn apology. You shouldn t get to ignore that it is unacceptable that the bullies and the trolls and deeply scary, messed up voices are the loudest. You shouldn t bloviate about a big tent when too many women are genuinely afraid, and too many more have come to a grudging acceptance that the price of being female and having opinions is daily degrading commentary.
Above: An image from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
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