I have personally received death threats multiple times after making "controversial" changes to an open source project I work on (as in: good in the long term for the project, bad in the short term for users). And I stopped counting the number of times I've read I should "kill myself". But guess what, instead of writing long blog posts explaining I'll quit open source development because of death threats, I just ignore them and continue doing what's best for the project. So far I don't think I've died yet, so that seems to be working pretty well.
There's also the long tail of death threats you won't even find out unless you look for them specifically (like, going on 4chan to read users talking about your project there). I've seen some other contributors to similar projects getting personally insulted, called "greedy jews" because they asked for donations to buy research hardware, and also being heavily encouraged to kill themselves. They also don't make drama about it, and in fact they'd probably be quite unhappy that I'm even mentioning it publicly.
So yeah, if I were looking to create drama I'd have more than enough material to do so, and I also could probably get "hounded out of my industry" if I was willing to.
I also think that TheSpiceIsLife has a point. Somewhere along the lines of championing equality it became unpopular to show empathy for males. For instance within my team we are now required to make sure that we ask everyone what their opinion is on any given matter just in case someone was too shy to speak up. I like the intent but to be honest being forced to do it kind of implies that we were not doing this previously. I'm sick of being treated like the bad guy simply for being a man.
I got the same thing growing up as a poor white kid. My problems were some how not real problems because it was easier for me being white..
As I said before, I do not like identity politics. Some may think that a laughable statement from a white man. Perhaps it is less so from a homosexual man. I hope not, because I'm perfectly happy to have people who would disregard what I say, solely because I fail to check the right boxes on their little lists, filter themselves out of the discourse in which I participate. They are beneath me. They are beneath you. They are beneath all thoughtful and sensitive people, and it is well they behave in accord with their station.
I also don't think one need lend any credence to identity politics in order to regard such harassment as that under discussion as contemptible and disgusting in its own right. It's not that this is bad because it happens to women. It's bad because it happens at all. And there are men, too, who have been hounded out of our industry. The tactics differ, but the end is the same. An industry in which such things happen to anyone is not worthy of any of us.
I have a lot of sympathy for what you're saying about feeling attacked just because you're male, or that your problems are dismissed just because you're white. I know those feelings, too, quite well. I understand why you feel that way, because I feel that way sometimes too. Sometimes we are attacked just because we're male. Sometimes our problems are dismissed just because we're white. When that happens, it's very easy to overlook nuance. But it's very important that we refuse to do so, because nuance of any kind is anathema to those who hew strongly to identity politics and employ its false model of humanity and interpersonal relations as a tool in their quest for power.
In that quest, no one is sacred. I know that those who engage in it claim otherwise. Evaluate their actions, not their words. I've had opportunity to do so in their treatment of homosexuals like myself. These people have claimed for years to be fighting on our side. "We are for you," they have said. "No one else is. You can trust us. We want to help." On the strength of these lies they have driven through laws and forcibly engineered social changes which would have been unimaginable only a few decades ago. Many of us believed these changes to be entirely to our benefit. Many of us still do. They are not. In the short term, it's true that these changes have offered some gay people better lives than they would otherwise have. In the long term, it is very probable that we will all find ourselves much worse off than we would be, had we not been exploited by the cynical and power-hungry. The changes I describe did not arise organically. They were enforced. Those upon whom they were enforced are angry about this. There are many of them, and few of us. I do not think it safe to assume such a bill will never be presented for collection. But when that happens, those who incurred it will be nowhere nearby. They have what they wanted from us. We'll be the ones to pay its price.
But it's not the same for a straight man - it's worse, in the short run at least. You can be of no use to them, so they have no cause to show you even false and bitter kindness, and the most for which you can hope is that you be permitted to abase yourself in exchange for some minimal sufferance. Or you may be swept away. And the decision is not yours to make.
That, at least, is the world they would create. They have not yet succeeded. They need not succeed at all. But they only become more likely to do so when we permit them to dictate the terms of engagement. We need not surrender so. Indeed, we must not. And part of that is retaining our grasp of nuance, of subtlety - of the fact that there is no such thing as collective humanity, that we are every one of us special - and that none of us is.
You do not deserve to be attacked, to be dismissed, as you are. Kathy Sierra did not deserve to be hounded from our industry, as she was. Men do not deserve to be mistreated because we are men. Women do not deserve to be mistreated because they are women. Those who do the former are the same as those who do the latter. They differ only in their tactics and their targets. This is a subtlety. It is easy to overlook in a world made less subtle by the day. But, if we're to have any hope of a better future - for everyone - than that to which we'd be consigned by those who love only power, we must take care to see clearly.
As a result, I did get a great many rape threats and violence threats because they thought I was female -- form people whose identities were not hidden at all, in fact (eg: CTOs of startups in SV with more than $40M in venture capital behind them were threatening me with rape).
These were the "feminists" threatening a perceived female for defending a male, who was not being sexist, but who was the current target of 5 minutes of hate.
Given the amount of harassment anti-gamergate people have engaged in, and the fact that every single thing they claim gamer gate does, they are doing (while I've not really seen gamer gate do it) and the rape threats I got... I think the harassers are the SJWs.