Here’s the problem I have with what you just said — I remember all too well watching GamerGate play out, to the point that I was basically driven into a fetal position out of sheer horror at the witch hunts. But I don’t ever remember anybody from GamerGate giving that as a justification.

The very public harassment campaign was heavily gender-based, no question. But what was in the rhetoric used to justify it were complaints about ethical breaches in game journalism and left-wing politics being introduced into video game content. I never saw anybody under that hashtag claim that women or minorities were absent, and nobody ever tried to erase women like Roberta Williams or Lori Cole.

Claiming that video games are a last bastion of white male masculinity may be a sin of the Men’s Rights Advocates movement, but I don’t think it was a sin of GamerGate. If anybody is to be damned, it should be for what they actually did, not for what some other group did.

(Also, I’ve got to dispute your characterization of GamerGate as an active movement. I had to monitor the GamerGate sub-reddit as part of my libel action against the new owners of The Escapist, and as far as I can tell GamerGate hasn’t been an effective activist movement in years. What’s left are a bunch of people in an echo chamber on Reddit griping about perceived injustices by the political left. I saw a single attempt to launch a public pressure operation — against the CBC — that apparently never got even close to off the ground.)