Feminist media critic calls for boycott of Utah campuses

"That was it for me," said Sarkeesian, who has kept multiple speaking engagements in the face of death threats, including one last weekend at Geek Girl Con in Seattle. "If they allowed weapons into the auditorium, that was too big a risk."

The canceled lecture vaulted USU — and the pro-gun Utah Legislature — into the national spotlight as controversies over feminism, gun laws and gaming intersected.

USU officials and Sarkeesian revealed new details about the threats in interviews Wednesday and Thursday. After the mass shooting threat was sent to the school Monday around 10:15 p.m., a second threat arrived Tuesday. That one, USU spokesman Tim Vitale confirmed, claimed affiliation with the controversial and sometimes-violent online video gamers' movement known as GamerGate.

Ann Berghout Austin, director of the university's Center for Women and Gender, said she informed USU's president, campus security and a technology specialist, who spent much of the night reviewing the threat before concluding it was serious.

The school then began trying to reach Sarkeesian, Austin said, who was in transit. She didn't get the message until she arrived Tuesday in Salt Lake City.

"We acted in good faith," Austin said Thursday during The Salt Lake Tribune's Trib Talk webcast, "and we feel that we were thorough in the information" the school provided.

Austin still hopes to arrange a remote lecture from Sarkeesian to students sometime in the future.

"We felt like she offered a very interesting perspective to our students," Austin said. "Our center stands for diverse ideas. We don't expect our students to accept all our ideas, but we do want our students to listen to all those ideas and broaden their horizons.

"The students are absolutely outraged — even the students who promote conceal and carry legislation," Austin said. "They just feel it's really unfortunate our freedom of speech has been abridged."

The GamerGate movement, on the other hand, seems to target free speech — specifically feminist criticism of the portrayal of women in video games and misogyny in gaming culture generally.

Initially purported to be a dispute about the ethics of a female game designer's relationship with a gaming journalist, GamerGate exploded into a flurry of rape and death threats against feminists in the gaming industry.

Robert Altizer, director of game design at the University of Utah, said many in the gaming community hoped GamerGate would prompt productive dialogue.

Women increasingly are joining gamer culture, Altizer noted. Nearly half the gamers (47 percent) are female — and women over age 40 are the fastest-growing segment.

"A lot of us looked at this debate as having the potential to be fruitful," he said, "but it devolves. Whenever threats of violence happen, that's the end of the debate."

Escalating threats during the past two months have driven multiple female game developers and critics from their homes.