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It's 2015. As Back to the Future foretold, we have hover boards, jetpacks, and even flying cars. Yet in 2015 I wouldn't have thought that there would be any need to write an article about why a company partnering with, and funding, organizations dedicated to propagating hate towards countless people around the world is sheer folly.

I guess this is what they mean by future shock.

Recently Intel announced a new $300 million initiative to support diversity in the tech industry [1]. The goal to open the doors to science and technology for many is a noble and laudable goal, and the size of the investment significant. However what largely went unreported were some of those whom Intel is partnering with for this initiative, which raises concerns about what this new venture will be able to produce both on a quantitative level of achieving its stated goals and in shaping the perception of what technology is and who it is for.

Among those whom Intel chose to partner with are the International Game Developers Association and Feminist Frequency. Recently both of these partner organizations have been embroiled in scandals which have rocked various sectors of the tech industry and have seen members and consumers of the tech industry harassed, blacklisted, and libeled.

The controversy over recent actions by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is the adoption (and possible partial creation of) a social media platform tool to label their members, gamers, one of their own chairmen, and yes, even Kentucky Fried Chicken among others, as the "worst harassers" of women. As a trade organization, the endorsement of the software tool (which allowed users of the tool to block all communications from those on a "list of names" utilized by the software) and labeling those it lists as the "worst harassers of women", IGDA endorsed (and again, might have had a hand in creating) an industry-wise blacklist (the source code of this software tool is literally "blacklist.txt") [2]. After a wave of backlash from both the public and those within the organization itself, IGDA rescinded its support of the blacklist (with the rather ominous caveat of "for now") however IGDA has yet to apologize to the tens of thousands of people it has so callously and incorrectly labeled as emissaries of hate. [3]

One could understand with a company as large as Intel if the information on the recent behavior of IGDA could simply have been lost or overlooked. But through partnering with another organization, Feminist Frequency, and with the harm it has wrought upon members and consumers of the tech industry, it appears that Intel has actively established these partnerships for their latest venture fully aware of the history of these groups and the controversy they bring.

According one of the founders of Feminist Frequency, Anita Sarkeesian, the organization was inspired by a telemarketer named Alex Mandossian and his methods for creating a business and networking in the media and corporate world. [4] Through "analysis" more notable for the press coverage it was able to generate than any inherent academic quality, Feminist Frequency ultimately raised over $150,000 on Kickstarter for a multi-part video series on YouTube exploring the role of women in video games. [5]

Birthed by questionable telemarketing tactics and a sensationalist, shameless press industry covering the world of video games [6], Feminist Frequency has also been accused of using unaccredited footage from other YouTube channels: and indeed, the lack of original content is something which has left many supporters of the group and those curious about it rather puzzled, as according to the groups' Kickstarter page the video series was sold to backers on the premise of being completed by December........

......of 2012. [7]

Most egregious of all, for an organization ostensibly formed to combat what it proclaims is rampant misogyny in the world of tech the writer and producer of the video series is not Anita Sarkeesian herself, but a Mr. Jonathan McIntosh, leaving Ms. Sarkeesian ultimately to be nothing more than a cheerleader for a man who is seemingly all too comfortable in the world of men who deem themselves fit to use and dismiss women at their leisure.

[8]

According to Feminist Frequency women in the world of video games are only capable of being "back ground decorations," "damsels", and "*** toys." The evidence to the contrary, however, is well-documented and readily accessible, as any quick internet search reveals: that is not what is remarkable. What is remarkable is the privileged position given by the press, the video game industry, and companies such as Intel to an organization which engages in questionable practices and perpetuates harmful stereotypes and myths of an entire industry and culture.

In a Business Week profile on Ms. Sarkeesian, Jonathan McIntosh states: "In the video game industry right now, women don't want to speak. There's a real fear, and it really is silencing people." [9]

Because this bears repeating:

However, the views of Ms. Sarkeesian and Mr. McIntosh are not shared by women who have actually worked in and shaped the industry and culture of gaming

As one of very few women in senior creative positions in the video game industry, Hennig is often asked about sexism and challenges she has faced. But she says it's not an issue. "Usually it has been men who gave me the opportunities I have had. I think this is a young enough and progressive enough industry that there just isn't any of that." --- Amy Hennig, writer and director for multiple best-selling and critically acclaimed series. One of Game Informers' Storytellers of the Decade, among many other accolades. [10] [11]

"I really think that the idea that women are somehow 'punished' or 'resented' in the computer industry is overblown. I never experienced any resentments or maltreatment by anybody in the computer industry about my gender. Never. In fact, it was the opposite; I always felt that the 'men' in the computer industry were happy to have me around. I never felt that it was a gender thing." --- Roberta Williams, co-founder of Sierra On-Line, creator of the graphic adventure genre in video games and multiple best-selling and critically acclaimed series. [12] [13]

Yet the baseless fantasies espoused by the Feminist Frequency organization are not restrained to the realm of video games:

[14]

[15]

Intel dedicated $300 million to the idea that men and women can and should work together. The vile rhetoric and actions of IGDA and Feminist Frequency are entirely opposed to these ideals. Building a tech industry and a video game culture that has more involvement from women and minorities cannot be formed through exclusion and hate of any one: inclusivity and acceptance can never be formed out of exclusion and abhorrence.

Through partnering with IGDA and Feminist Frequency, Intel is subjecting their brand and their shareholders to the overt politicization and divisiveness of groups which have a documented history of blacklisting, libeling, and spreading hate against countless individuals, companies, and cultures. Ultimately through their actions Intel is making a statement about what technology is: platforms for the proselytizing of enmity and strife, where ideas are not to be vetted through free and public discourse but the whims of ideologues and self-appointed censors.

This is not the dream of science that those who founded Intel had. Andrew Grove, co-founder of Intel, fled Hungary when the country was gripped by totalitarians who policed thought and human expression [16]. This is not the dream of a man who said:

"Technology is both an end in itself and a means to other ends. When you figure something out and make it work, there is pleasure and excitement. Not just because the technology is going to do something, but because you created something with its own inherent beauty, like art, like literature, like music." [17]

Science and technology should be what unites, not divides: science is home to creators, explorers, pioneers, ambassadors for humanity and the human spirit. Science has no room for hate or ideology, for science educates, informs, and is fundamentally about the search for understanding. Science cannot be restrained by the chains of bigotry or worldviews so enamored of affirming their prejudices they exclude all the wonders and questions within the rest of the vast cosmos.

As Carl Sagan said:

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.

-The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1997), 304. [18]

But the practitioners of science are only human: and in the modern world with all its dazzling array of pressures and demands of conformity, for Intel to align itself with the evangelists of envy and strife is to proclaim that technology and science, and the capital needed to pursue it all, is not for those who dare take the search for truth as their one and only gospel.

The creators, explorers, pioneers of science and technology so very often only have their convictions to guide them on what can be a very lonely journey towards truth. The price of publicity and to not stir the wrath of the loud and lucrative hate machine of groups like Feminist Frequency may be an unimaginable $300 million, but the cost to obtaining the stated goals of the diversity initiative may be incalculable as those dollars fund the propagation of the attitudes and myths which may very well create an environment keeping women and minorities out of the tech industry (if enough well-funded voices keep repeating often enough that women and minorities are not wanted, it isn't hard to conceive how some may actually begin to believe it).

Intel could have done better, could have put that money towards groups befitting of its history and the stated goals of the diversity initiative. Recall that IGDA blacklist and one of the chairmen of IDGA on it? Robert Rosario, the chairmen of IGDA Puerto Rico and the chairman on the blacklist, is involved with a campaign to get women involved in technology called Include Girls: it is strange that Intel would partner with IGDA itself and Feminist Frequency, yet either choose not to partner with the Include Girls campaign or know of it. [19]

$300 million may have been the cost of the integrity of Intel: but as a consumer, I must seriously question if I can do business with those who partner with the peddlers of fear and hate.

Larry Carney is the author of Dreams of A Distant Planet: Chrono Trigger and the World Revolution of Video Games. A scholar of the culture and industry of gaming, he can be reached on Twitter @JazzKatCritic

Sources:

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/technology/intel-budgets-300-million-for-diversity.html?_r=0]

2. https://github.com/freebsdgirl?tab=activity

3. https://twitter.com/igda_ed/status/536193409867079680

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaPbgNVuaEI

5. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/description

6. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php

7. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/description

8. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1OOcoECMAAyKkq.png

9. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-26/anita-sarkeesian-battles-sexism-in-games-gamergate-harassment

10. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/07/business/la-fi-himi7-2010feb07

11. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/12/02/storytellers-of-the-decade_3a00_-amy-henning-interview.aspx