From “But What If It’s Killing You?” by anna anthropy

I was doxxed recently, as part of an ongoing campaign of harassment against women in games: you know, the one that never, ever ends. Someone posted my birth name, my partner’s birth name, my parents’ names and professions, my sisters’ names. They posted links to a porn shoot I was in (under my own name, the same name I attach to all of my work), lest there be any doubt that the motivation behind their campaign is anything other than punishing women for their sexuality.

The week that happened, I was speaking at a zine festival, to a room full of women, people of color, queer people. I, who have made a career out of encouraging marginalized people to get excited about games, to carve a space for themselves in games culture, I did not feel I could truthfully tell the beautiful people in that room to subject themselves to the ugliness that exists for marginalized people in games. I could not ask them to accept that abuse.

“If they’re this mad at you,” (we tell each other) “you must be doing something right.” In truth, all we’re doing is continuing to put up with it—no less than a Herculean task. God, we must be amazons.

We must really love FIELD OF WORK. Women in FIELD OF WORK journalism must really care about FIELD OF WORK to put up with the constant abuse, threats, attempts at manipulating their sexual history to get them fired or discredited. Especially when they’re good writers, they can make way more money and deal with way, way less harassment writing about literally anything else. Especially when their own editors give in to the misogynist children attempting to use their sexuality against them. They must really be passionate about FIELD OF WORK.

Passion is the greatest weakness of anyone in games or tech; it is the thing that will be used against you, time and time again, to wring more unpaid work out of you, to pull you back in again and again. Passion is the reason a poison such as crunch time is still allowed to exist—a thing that is literally killing and destroying game developers. If you’re really passionate about games, you’ll do what you have to. Passion is why people in tech voluntarily invent new ways for corporations to mistreat them. Now, thanks to Soylent™, we don’t even have to feed our employees! We wouldn’t want to interrupt your passion for coding with something like food and a momentary break from the endless labor you volunteer for, again and again.

I’m calling for an end to Passion.

“It’s a good thing that I love games so much, or-” Stop. Basta! There is no “or” anymore. Let’s not make it so easy for them.

Games and tech have done nothing to make you feel welcome. They have tried everything they can to hurt you, to wound you. Sisters and brothers, they don’t deserve you.

We admire the strength of women, people of color, queers in enduring all this, in managing, somehow, to make rent month after month. It takes lots of it, great stone mountains of strength that rise higher than the loudest catcall or attempt to slut-shame, higher than the tallest ivory tower of the academic with the career-for-life who tells you to calm down, you’re being irrational.

But here is another thing that takes strength: to say “No more.” To walk away, to choose something else, to protect yourself. To say “I don’t deserve this.” The strength to unchain yourself from the altar of martyrdom. There’s no shame in taking your hand off of something poison.

But Anna, what if that’s just giving them what they want, though? What if that’s just conceding space to them, when we should be maintaining visibility at all costs? What if things are getting better—just very slowly?

What if it’s killing you?

• ELISSA SHEVINSKY is cited by Reuters on Google and women in tech (8/9/2017)
• An excerpt from GAY PROPAGANDA to celebrate National Coming Out Day (10/11/2016)
• In Bookforum, Sarah Leonard contrasts the feminist utopias technology once promised to the “sexist hellscape” of Silicon Valley documented in LEAN OUT (3/21/2016)
• LEAN OUT named one of the top 100 business books of the year by Inc. (12/22/2015)
• ELISSA SHEVINSKY profiled in San Jose Mercury News (10/1/2015)
• “That’s why I think everyone who hires or manages anyone in tech ought to read the remarkable book, LEAN OUT, edited by Elissa Shevinsky.” —Venturebeat (9/28/2015)
• “A welcome counter-manifesto, with fangs” Broadly reviews LEAN OUT (9/4/2015)
• ELISSA SHEVINSKY named in Bustle‘s roundup of women-run tech companies combating sexism (9/1/2015)
• TechCrunch calls LEAN OUT “disconcertingly thought-provoking” (8/31/2015)
• “A gift” Leena van Deventer reflects on reading LEAN OUT (8/11/2015)
• Wendy Grossman praises LEAN OUT on ZDNet (8/7/2015)
• Wendy Grossman reflects on LEAN OUT and the changing role of women in tech (8/3/2015)
• ELISSA SHEVINSKY profiled in Williams Magazine (7/23/2015)
• LEAN OUT excerpted in Metro (7/20/2015)
• ELISSA SHEVINSKY profiled in Metro (7/20/2015)
• LEAN OUT editor ELISSA SHEVINSKY talks to CNN about why she’s decided to publicly come out as a lesbian (7/15/2015)
• “Where do I sign up to be a man on the Internet?” ELISSA SHEVINSKY weighs in on women’s issues on Huffpost Live (7/10/2015)
• LEAN OUT reviewed in The Hindu (6/24/2015)
• HuffPost Live interviews ELISSA SHEVINSKY (5/15/2015)
• ELISSA SHEVINSKY joins the Venture Beat podcast to talk about the motivation behind LEAN OUT (4/1/2015)