and violent attitudes toward females" and called on the state to allow universities "to ban firearms from venues where they are not just inappropriate, but destructive of the mission of an institution of higher learning". In an August 2015 interview with The Guardian, Sarkeesian remarked of dealing with the pervasive harassment (her "new normal") that older mentors and feminists told her "We were dealing with that, but they were throwing rocks at us." Soraya Murray describes the attack as a "watershed moment" in the "culture war" being fought over representations of women and minorities in video games. At VidCon 2017, Sarkeesian appeared on a panel discussing online harassment directed towards women. A group of YouTubers and bloggers who produce content critical of feminism and political correctness sat directly in front of the stage and filmed Sarkeesian as part of a targeted harassment campaign against her. Sarkeesian singled out British YouTuber Carl Benjamin, seated in the first row, as a serial harasser of hers. Speaking directly to Benjamin, she said, "I hate to give you attention because you're a garbage human." The event went viral among both critics and supporters of Sarkeesian. Benjamin accused Sarkeesian of abuse and cyberbullying; in a blog post, Sarkeesian wrote: VidCon founder Hank Green issued a statement that the group's actions were clear "intimidating behaviour" and apologised for the situation "which resulted in [Sarkeesian] being subjected to a hostile environment that she had not signed up for". In a retrospective for Polygon in December 2019, Sarkeesian said that "GamerGate's real goals were expressed in the explicit racism, sexism, and transphobia of the memes the movement generated, and the posts its supporters wrote on the message boards where they organized and strategized. Later, the flimsiness of the 'ethics in games journalism' pretense would become a mocking meme signifying a bad faith argument. It would almost be funny, if GamerGate hadn't done so much harm, and caused so much lasting trauma." Sarkeesian also criticized the video game industry's response to Gamergate, saying "the game industry's silence was shameful". On August 3, 2020, Sarkeesian launched the Game and Online Harassment Hotline, a free non-profit service that started development in August 2019. Media appearances Sarkeesian and her work have come to much greater public attention following the announcement of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games and the harassment she subsequently faced. These events helped bring the issue of pervasive sexual