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The sentence is in Chapter two of Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me.

“Women in the online gaming communit have been harassed, threatened, and driven out. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who documented such incidents, received support for her work, but also, in the words of a journalist, 'another wave of really aggressive, you know, violent personal threats, her accounts attempted to be hacked. And one man in Ontario took the step of making an online video game where you could punch Anita's image on the screen. And if you punched it multiple times, bruises and cuts would appear on her image.' The difference between these online gamers and the Taliban men who, last October, tried to murder fourteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about the right of Pakistani women to education is one of degree. Both are trying to silence and punish women for claiming voice, power, and the right to participate.”

I think that it meant that the two incidents are the same?

But, I'm not sure, please provide me with a definition.

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  • My take is: The difference … is one [of degree]. In other words, their degrees are different. But I'm not a native speaker.
    – dan
    Commented Feb 14, 2020 at 13:07
  • It just means the difference between online gamers and repressive Taliban men isn't something "absolute" (like the difference between black and white). They're just different points on a "continuum" (as, say, lighter grey and darker grey).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Feb 14, 2020 at 13:40

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The phrase you have highlighted is part of a very long sentence with various parenthetic statements. It might help to cut it down a bit:

The difference between these online gamers and the Taliban men who, last October, tried to murder fourteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about the right of Pakistani women to education is one of degree.

It is saying the difference between these two groups of men is one of degree.

"Degree" means the amount, level, or extent to which something happens or is present.

So, what this means is that the difference in behaviour between these two groups of men being discussed is about the level of their behaviour, not the type. They both apparently threatened women, but one to a far greater degree than the other.

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