While I was doing my daily walk I was listening to a podcast and they were talking to someone who has been playing D&D since the 80s. He was talking about how the hobby had been infiltrated and at a convention Anita was a special guest speaker who spoke about ........ wait for it....... sexism in Dungeons and Dragons.
How did she get to where she is and why did gaming companies bend the knee to her? Did she ever claim to even like video games?
It's funny because when I first heard the feminists whining about "toxic gaming" and how they heard abusive language on games I was a little sympathetic (this is before I realized what was coming) but then I realized that 99% of the "toxic" behavior is basically normal trash talk between guys.
Just Some Guy (great youtuber if you've never listened to him) once responded to these feminists complaining about not being welcomed and needing a "safe space" by saying that they were always welcome and there have always been women who liked nerdy things, but these particular women only started being interested when it became trendy in pop culture to be a nerd/gamer.
She honestly reminds me of the girls when I was growing up who made fun of my friends and I for liking video games, Star Wars, Sci-Fi, etc.
This is why I always say to be wary of any female who enters the hobby and can't shut up about being a female gamer/nerd. Same goes for any minority. There were always women and minorities interested in the various nerd hobbies but for some reason that is ignored along with the popular characters. Also, be very wary of any white guys who wring their hands and lament the "lack of diversity" in their hobby.
Sorry for going off on the tangent, but how in the heck has Anita gained so much power? Blackmail?
I can answer that.
She didn't in 2010.
She did for the Feminist Frequency Kickstarter in May 2012: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.
I doubt she had a 'come to jesus' moment and became a born-again gamer. I suspect she adopted the guise of a gamer to make her feminist grift work better, in a "Do better, fellow gamers" sort of way.
It's not that she really became or ever was a gamer. That was just a tack for her self promotion. It was purely a marketing move, likely learned from her time promoting teleseminars.
She's been trained as a conwoman. She runs something between a crowd-funded MLM for NPCs and a protection racket on game devs. That's the brand of ideological snake oil that she's selling.