Once upon a time
I knew a videogame developer who
for reasons I cannot tell you
wanted people to know that the other videogame developer who had assaulted them
wasn’t safe, but still
wanted to remain anonymous themselves.
What to do?
After some brainstorming, an idea formed between us:
Whenever their attacker’s name
Entered
Any conversation I was a part of
I was to say,
“I don’t like [name]” and if anyone asked
“Why?”
I was to say,
“[Name] is not a safe person.”
In all the years I have been saying this, nobody has asked me “why?” yet.
For a time
(my time in games)
everywhere I went was a confessional
some nervous person swimming across a crowd toward me to hear
“I believe you”
in a coatroom a hotel room a living room a stranger’s bathroom
I know too much about too many of you
I imagine some panic reading that, what if, a hypothetical list
(and, I thought about it: myself the Joe McCarthy of videogames, but)
I will not weaponize private grief and fear
I will not create a witch hunt to entertain bystanders
I will keep believing survivors of abuse, assault, and rape and
supporting their choices
In all the years people have said they’re “very sorry”, most manage to ship games (without doing much else).
Once upon a time
someone I’ve never met
vowed they would find my home
and rape me until I was dead
Hundreds have sworn this oath to me
but I wasn’t the first
and I wasn’t the last
(I’ll bet you say that to all the girls)
and their reason then wasn’t an anomaly
(I’ve never seen a masculinity so fragile before!...will it break if I touch it?)
But in all the years I have been told this will happen to me,
in all the long years that you have been
verbally abusing,
intimidating,
threatening,
undermining,
harassing,
harming,
hitting,
stalking,
exploiting,
chasing,
choking,
assaulting
and
raping,
you still haven’t raped us to death.