Listen. And believe. Just by starting there, we might very well be on the right path to maybe seeing things get better.
A lot of the "talking past each other" issue comes down a matter of belief. Either you believe the stories women share about their varied experiences with harassment[...]or you don't believe them, in which you are completely dismissing their lived experiences[...]
There's an almost religious fervor in your posts that is creeping me out. "Listen...believe...have faith...submit..."
I find the exhortation to 'just believe' repellant, not just because the willful stupidity involved but because it infantilizes women to consider them incapable of lying or trolling for their own aggrandizement.
There is a third option to belief and denial: skepticism. One is skeptical when they're withholding belief but open to changing their mind as further evidence comes to light.
I believe this woman received threats for her opinions on the Malifaux game. I'm skeptical they came from Wyrd staff.
I believe she was harassed by a regular customer at the game store she worked at, and the owner didn't do enough to stop it. I'm glad he was reprimanded. I believe she has been groped at cons. That's awful and I support measures such as those mentioned by [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] upthread to try to make game stores and cons as safe and welcoming as possible for all.
I'm skeptical that a Canadian police officer told a woman reporting a rape "I'm not writing a report for a drunk slut" and hung up on her. I'm skeptical that a group of middle-aged men in a game store chanted in unison sexually abusive language to a thirteen year old girl and laughed as she ran away. This stuff is out of a '70s horror movie, not real life Winnipeg.
I've been reading the thread about this on the Malifaux game forum. At one point she says "men are worse than babies because at least babies know what breasts are for" (and this is a thread where the most inflammatory posts have been deleted!). On her Tumblr she says "gamers are the scum of the earth" and "nerds are the literal worst". She was not driven away from this game because she's a woman and they want it to be for men only. She was driven away because she demanded changes to the game that most of the other fans disagreed with and she trolled them for disagreeing with her.
I DO NOT condone threats of violence as a means to silence someone! But I think she should have been banned from their forum for trolling before that happened.