I think it has to be taken in the context of what American counter culture has historically been like (run through with chauvinist libertinism absolutely everywhere, even in spaces that broadly held at least some left wing or positive aspects) as well as the state of the left at the time (absolutely dismal, incoherent, and fragmented in a way that makes the sad state of affairs today look good by comparison).
Like when I was in highschool all the queer outcasts and theater kids were on 4chan, and when I was in college I wound up spending a lot of time on a /tg/ D&D IRC server that one of my old highschool friends invited me to which was run by a gay couple. I can only describe it as that the sort of edgy nihilism and bigotry that ran through 4chan’s culture was just sort of tacitly tolerated at the time even by the targets of it, because that’s just how bad things were back then and that to engage in counter culture at all meant hardening oneself to it and never letting on that it bothered you.
And then we hit the crystalizing point of gamergate/its surrounding culture war flash points, and at once the chauvinists became militantly worse because instead of just being assholes they now had a unified objective to fight to make things worse by being even more aggressively awful, and at the same time there was a reaction against that and people increasingly stopped putting up with their bullshit and started carving out spaces that were better and less toxic for counter culture.
I think it has to be taken in the context of what American counter culture has historically been like (run through with chauvinist libertinism absolutely everywhere, even in spaces that broadly held at least some left wing or positive aspects) as well as the state of the left at the time (absolutely dismal, incoherent, and fragmented in a way that makes the sad state of affairs today look good by comparison).
Like when I was in highschool all the queer outcasts and theater kids were on 4chan, and when I was in college I wound up spending a lot of time on a /tg/ D&D IRC server that one of my old highschool friends invited me to which was run by a gay couple. I can only describe it as that the sort of edgy nihilism and bigotry that ran through 4chan’s culture was just sort of tacitly tolerated at the time even by the targets of it, because that’s just how bad things were back then and that to engage in counter culture at all meant hardening oneself to it and never letting on that it bothered you.
And then we hit the crystalizing point of gamergate/its surrounding culture war flash points, and at once the chauvinists became militantly worse because instead of just being assholes they now had a unified objective to fight to make things worse by being even more aggressively awful, and at the same time there was a reaction against that and people increasingly stopped putting up with their bullshit and started carving out spaces that were better and less toxic for counter culture.