Well for someone like me who still has difficulties grasping the concept of Gamergate, it would indeed be useful to focus on real examples of what a "true" gamergater wants and does. So maybe you could give me some specific examples of stuff you're rooting for/against :
- could you name specific games that changed "the wrong way" due to social pressure ?
- same question for journalism, if that's also part of your concern : what specific behavior are you disapproving ?
- most importantly, what are you actively doing to defend those values ?
Sometimes it just seems this whole gamergate stuff is a bunch of people going at each other's throat on the internet, while for the industry it's business as usual.
Sorry, I missed your posting. Here's as far as my understanding goes.
Maybe most important to know is that those that align themselves with the core principles of GamerGate (as can be found in the OP) wouldn't call themselves 'GamerGater' or even see themselves as part of a group. These people hate labels and want to be recognized as individuals - well, most people would want that, right? So when anyone accuses GamerGate of being a right-wing, misogynistic harassment movement, they reduce the entire movement, made from people of every political affiliation, race, sexuality, age, sex, or whatever, to something that a tiny fraction of truly hateful idiots did. Imagine a member of NeoGAF making a thread about denying the Holocaust - even after closing the thread and banning that user, would it be fair to now call NeoGAF an alt-right neonazi group? Hardly.
So when we're speaking about GamerGate, we're speaking about the three core ideas as mentioned in the OP. What opponents of GamerGate, however, want to talk about is what they chose to brand GamerGate as - all for the wrongdoings of some idiots. That is why it's almost impossible to find a neutral source writing about GamerGate. On one hand you have instigators like Kotaku, Polygon, Wu, Zoey or Anita, who are talking about 'their' GamerGate - which mainstream media then accept as gospel, because women complaining about misogyny and harassment ... nobody dares questioning that. On the other hand, you have the actual GamerGate idea/movement/whatever, that knows well about itself - but nobody is interested in hearing their side, because the former group has already successfully poisened the well.
As for the specifics you asked for: Often times, you cannot point to a censored element and say 'that's because if that', because companies keep very quiet about it. You have to look at Tokyo Mirage Sessions to understand that. The game was censored to hell and back again. To this day, Nintendo has refused to comment on it. However, we got an awfully passive-aggressive statement from Atlus eventually that came down to admitting that the game was changed a lot, but it wasn't Atlus' decision. Very telling.
More obvious changes are the removee breadt slider in Xenoblade Chronicles X, various non-sensical age changes, or companies deciding not to release games in the west because of the current climate. And then you have all these cringworthy, tacked on 'diversity quota' chatacters in western games. GamerGate is not against diversity. But it should come naturally, not forced in ridiculous ways. Right now, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is demonized because it has no black characters. It diesn't matter that there were no widespread black people in that region in that era, but that doesn't matter: social justice activists are outraged. The lead developer is now a neonazi, and liking the game is seen as 'problematic'. That's what GamerGate dislikes.
I personally donlt follow gaming media much anymore, gematsu is all I need. But as mentioned before, the mainstream websites chose to ally with those that defined what GamerGate is in their limited view, so it's generally very frustrating to read any article that is about political elements. Then you even have jerks like George Takei who used 'GamerGate!' to deflect attention from his very own fuck-up during the whole Cuphead-disaster.
The media have made many bad decisions, and GamerGate calls them out for it.
As for your last bullet point, I'll refer to the beginning of my posting. Nobody is really actively doing anything. We want to enjoy playing games the way their developers envisioned them. That's it. Idon't think that's so bad.