The "tech protest movement" started with Adria Richards and "Donglegate". It was the first prominent example of a woman in tech using her privileged position to shame and ultimately ruin two men, for the simple mistake of making a crude joke while she was in the same room. She resorted to public shaming of the men, and harassment of their employers, after her attempts to have them ejected from the PyCon conference were unsuccessful.
Everything that has gone wrong in tech found its nexus in that moment, with gamergate (and a bunch of other things) as the inevitable result. I'd even argue that it gave impetus to the troon movement, which went from a tumblr joke to a powerful force within the industry over the following three or four years, as some men saw how powerful women had become within the industry and decided to appropriate that social status for themselves.
It was a definite inflection point.