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On March 09 2015 18:58 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 17:52 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 15:05 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 12:05 ninazerg wrote:
Documentaries like this are always just ass-backwards. Nearly every girl who has played video games that I've known gets special treatment and is welcomed with open arms into communities as long as they aren't completely batshit insane or a psycho. Then again, if they have the looks, then being psycho is acceptable. Additionally, girl gamers with very poor skills in their respective games will get way more viewers than men if they have a webcam on.
I see men getting harassed all the time. "You suck", "Faggot", "Get cancer", "Commit suicide", "I hope you die", and so on, are examples of the awful stuff that male gamers will hear on a regular basis if they gravitate toward the wrong communities within gaming. This tells me that there is a bigger issue here, but it always seems like special interests groups want to hijack the conversation and make it about them. Always interesting to hear input from a female gamer on this. Think it might be worse in other genres (especially those with voice chat) like FPS, MOBA, ect? I kind of think more speech/visual interaction between players is where gaming is headed in general. I haven't really noticed too much difference between the RTS and FPS crowds, to be honest. A vast majority of my interactions with other players have been positive. There have been rare occasions where I've been harassed, and it sucked, but it didn't really have like a long-term effect on me as far as shaping my perception of gamers in general. It is out there, though. If you look at Youtube comments, people are horrible to each other there. I've made personal adjustments for certain things, but not everyone might be dealing with harassment as well as I have in the past. Here's where I start to diverge away from the view that this is a woman-only problem: Some people can take verbal punishment all day and laugh it off, and others crumble. That's not a gender thing. I've talked to men who have really taken some of the stuff said to them really hard. And I'm not marginalizing any woman's experience with harassment, either. I'm saying some people are okay and can deal with it and have a support system of friends they can vent to, and there are other people who are legitimately being hurt by harassment. The best thing for hurting people is to comfort them, not try and solve all their problems. For example, if a friend of yours gets bullied, you want to get revenge on the bully. But getting revenge doesn't build your friend up, it just tears yet another person down. There is a time and a place for getting justice, but being there for your friend and comforting them is best. I feel like documentaries and articles that spin issues with harassment into an "us versus them" debacle encourages hostility towards an opposing 'side'. This is often grossly generalized, and with feminists, the issue is framed as an indictment of men, all men. The problem with that is that most men are not harassing women, it is a very select few who do, and they also harass other men. Additionally, even though women tend to be more passive towards men, I'm certain there are instances where women harass men via video game chat. To take this a step further, I would say a bigger problem in gaming harassment is actually racism. Racism is used more often than sexism. I'm not just talking about some white kids throwing the n-word around. I mean everyone is racist towards everyone else. I know most of it is in jest, and some of it is to get a reaction, but some of it is legitimately nasty and cruel. Thanks for taking the time to give me this well reasoned post. As a straight white male, I often feel like it's not really my place to get into debates like this because I don't face the same level or type of descrimination minorities (female gamers, black gamers, ect) do. I don't feel like it marginalizes my problems to focus on the problems of minorities, but I do agree with you that it feels like these arguments are often missing the point that most gamers aren't like this, only a select few, and they're like this to everybody. Minorities just happen to be jucier targets. We should be working together to figure out a solution, not fighting eachother. Being thick skinned is pretty much essentially to playing games these days, which is unfortunate. I personally have been subjected to a lot of insults (and really who hasn't?), but the only ones that have ever really affected me have been instances where I shared some of my insecurities with somebody I thought I could trust and had them throw it in my face in front of my online friends, or responded to harassment rather than simply ignoring them when it became apparent how they were acting. I've never actually had somebody look up my facebook or anything that personal, thankfully, but I know it happens and it really bugs me. Just wanted to share where I was coming from. I do have to say I think the Sexism and Racism are equivallently prominent in gaming (and I find it interesting that you don't), but this might be skewed by my perception as an RTS gamer where both of these things are both quite rare (I don't know my opponent's ethnicity or gender in probably 99%+ of the games I play and typically get generic insults that could apply to anyone). Overall though I'm glad you at least don't blame gamers as a whole for he acts of a few. TBH this is my biggest problem with things like this documentary or GamerGate, it makes me feel like I'm being held personally responsible for something I'm not a part of. I have to say, there really isn't much variance in the amount of vitriol in RTS/FPS games as far as I can tell. I think every gaming community has their very own Clan X17 though. It's difficult to quantify the amount of harassment or types of harassment being exhibited, so I would say that I personally feel racism is a bigger issue than sexism. Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 18:10 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 18:01 King David wrote:
This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone. Attitudes like these is precisely why we need documentaries like the one being discussed discussed. 1) this isn't about you 2) men are not abused to the same extent as women 3) these s outcries aren't old actually we haven't really had a serious discussion about harassment against women online until recently 4) g it's great how you presume to know how women should deal with their problems Are you a woman? Because if you're a man debating other men on what women feel, then maybe you should stop it. Men are, in fact, abused as much as women, although the kind of harassment is often quite different.
I'm not, which is why I generally try to tell the people here not to speak on behalf of women and how women should be feeling with regard to rape threats. I'd much prefer that women, as in the documentary, and yourself, be able to figure out this issue without guys saying "it's not a big deal". Men can have their views, and I think this discussion is great, but as persons ignorant of the situation women are put in, we should accept that our views are necessary subordinate to those who are actually complaining about the harassment.
If the same conclusion of "deal with it" is reached by the female gaming community, then alright. But it seems that the current dialogue points to areas where there can be improvement in the gaming community.
I would disagree that men are abused as much as women though. Or is your point harassment (or both)? And in any event if the harassment is substantively different, I think it very unhelpful to try and address harassment both trivial and serious at one go.
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On March 09 2015 19:15 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 18:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 17:52 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 15:05 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 12:05 ninazerg wrote:
Documentaries like this are always just ass-backwards. Nearly every girl who has played video games that I've known gets special treatment and is welcomed with open arms into communities as long as they aren't completely batshit insane or a psycho. Then again, if they have the looks, then being psycho is acceptable. Additionally, girl gamers with very poor skills in their respective games will get way more viewers than men if they have a webcam on.
I see men getting harassed all the time. "You suck", "Faggot", "Get cancer", "Commit suicide", "I hope you die", and so on, are examples of the awful stuff that male gamers will hear on a regular basis if they gravitate toward the wrong communities within gaming. This tells me that there is a bigger issue here, but it always seems like special interests groups want to hijack the conversation and make it about them. Always interesting to hear input from a female gamer on this. Think it might be worse in other genres (especially those with voice chat) like FPS, MOBA, ect? I kind of think more speech/visual interaction between players is where gaming is headed in general. I haven't really noticed too much difference between the RTS and FPS crowds, to be honest. A vast majority of my interactions with other players have been positive. There have been rare occasions where I've been harassed, and it sucked, but it didn't really have like a long-term effect on me as far as shaping my perception of gamers in general. It is out there, though. If you look at Youtube comments, people are horrible to each other there. I've made personal adjustments for certain things, but not everyone might be dealing with harassment as well as I have in the past. Here's where I start to diverge away from the view that this is a woman-only problem: Some people can take verbal punishment all day and laugh it off, and others crumble. That's not a gender thing. I've talked to men who have really taken some of the stuff said to them really hard. And I'm not marginalizing any woman's experience with harassment, either. I'm saying some people are okay and can deal with it and have a support system of friends they can vent to, and there are other people who are legitimately being hurt by harassment. The best thing for hurting people is to comfort them, not try and solve all their problems. For example, if a friend of yours gets bullied, you want to get revenge on the bully. But getting revenge doesn't build your friend up, it just tears yet another person down. There is a time and a place for getting justice, but being there for your friend and comforting them is best. I feel like documentaries and articles that spin issues with harassment into an "us versus them" debacle encourages hostility towards an opposing 'side'. This is often grossly generalized, and with feminists, the issue is framed as an indictment of men, all men. The problem with that is that most men are not harassing women, it is a very select few who do, and they also harass other men. Additionally, even though women tend to be more passive towards men, I'm certain there are instances where women harass men via video game chat. To take this a step further, I would say a bigger problem in gaming harassment is actually racism. Racism is used more often than sexism. I'm not just talking about some white kids throwing the n-word around. I mean everyone is racist towards everyone else. I know most of it is in jest, and some of it is to get a reaction, but some of it is legitimately nasty and cruel. Thanks for taking the time to give me this well reasoned post. As a straight white male, I often feel like it's not really my place to get into debates like this because I don't face the same level or type of descrimination minorities (female gamers, black gamers, ect) do. I don't feel like it marginalizes my problems to focus on the problems of minorities, but I do agree with you that it feels like these arguments are often missing the point that most gamers aren't like this, only a select few, and they're like this to everybody. Minorities just happen to be jucier targets. We should be working together to figure out a solution, not fighting eachother. Being thick skinned is pretty much essentially to playing games these days, which is unfortunate. I personally have been subjected to a lot of insults (and really who hasn't?), but the only ones that have ever really affected me have been instances where I shared some of my insecurities with somebody I thought I could trust and had them throw it in my face in front of my online friends, or responded to harassment rather than simply ignoring them when it became apparent how they were acting. I've never actually had somebody look up my facebook or anything that personal, thankfully, but I know it happens and it really bugs me. Just wanted to share where I was coming from. I do have to say I think the Sexism and Racism are equivallently prominent in gaming (and I find it interesting that you don't), but this might be skewed by my perception as an RTS gamer where both of these things are both quite rare (I don't know my opponent's ethnicity or gender in probably 99%+ of the games I play and typically get generic insults that could apply to anyone). Overall though I'm glad you at least don't blame gamers as a whole for he acts of a few. TBH this is my biggest problem with things like this documentary or GamerGate, it makes me feel like I'm being held personally responsible for something I'm not a part of. I have to say, there really isn't much variance in the amount of vitriol in RTS/FPS games as far as I can tell. I think every gaming community has their very own Clan X17 though. It's difficult to quantify the amount of harassment or types of harassment being exhibited, so I would say that I personally feel racism is a bigger issue than sexism. On March 09 2015 18:10 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 18:01 King David wrote:
This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone. Attitudes like these is precisely why we need documentaries like the one being discussed discussed. 1) this isn't about you 2) men are not abused to the same extent as women 3) these s outcries aren't old actually we haven't really had a serious discussion about harassment against women online until recently 4) g it's great how you presume to know how women should deal with their problems Are you a woman? Because if you're a man debating other men on what women feel, then maybe you should stop it. Men are, in fact, abused as much as women, although the kind of harassment is often quite different. If the same conclusion of "deal with it" is reached by the female gaming community, then alright. But it seems that the current dialogue points to areas where there can be improvement in the gaming community.
i mean it seems pretty silly to assume any large populations that just happen to be groupable in some way can reach a meaningful consensus on any controversial issue. people have case-by-case idiosyncratic views on these issues, no conclusion will ever be "reached by the female gaming community" in an all-inclusive, "problem's solved" manner.
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On March 09 2015 19:15 levelping wrote:
I would disagree that men are abused as much as women though. Or is your point harassment (or both)? And in any event if the harassment is substantively different, I think it very unhelpful to try and address harassment both trivial and serious at one go.
I'd argue more men are (seriously) harassed than women if we compared raw numbers. (edit: No data to back this up, just a guess.) A higher % of women are definitely harassed relative to their total population size though.
Edit2: I'd look at the instances of 'swatting' as an example.
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On March 09 2015 19:25 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 19:15 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 18:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 17:52 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 15:05 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 12:05 ninazerg wrote:
Documentaries like this are always just ass-backwards. Nearly every girl who has played video games that I've known gets special treatment and is welcomed with open arms into communities as long as they aren't completely batshit insane or a psycho. Then again, if they have the looks, then being psycho is acceptable. Additionally, girl gamers with very poor skills in their respective games will get way more viewers than men if they have a webcam on.
I see men getting harassed all the time. "You suck", "Faggot", "Get cancer", "Commit suicide", "I hope you die", and so on, are examples of the awful stuff that male gamers will hear on a regular basis if they gravitate toward the wrong communities within gaming. This tells me that there is a bigger issue here, but it always seems like special interests groups want to hijack the conversation and make it about them. Always interesting to hear input from a female gamer on this. Think it might be worse in other genres (especially those with voice chat) like FPS, MOBA, ect? I kind of think more speech/visual interaction between players is where gaming is headed in general. I haven't really noticed too much difference between the RTS and FPS crowds, to be honest. A vast majority of my interactions with other players have been positive. There have been rare occasions where I've been harassed, and it sucked, but it didn't really have like a long-term effect on me as far as shaping my perception of gamers in general. It is out there, though. If you look at Youtube comments, people are horrible to each other there. I've made personal adjustments for certain things, but not everyone might be dealing with harassment as well as I have in the past. Here's where I start to diverge away from the view that this is a woman-only problem: Some people can take verbal punishment all day and laugh it off, and others crumble. That's not a gender thing. I've talked to men who have really taken some of the stuff said to them really hard. And I'm not marginalizing any woman's experience with harassment, either. I'm saying some people are okay and can deal with it and have a support system of friends they can vent to, and there are other people who are legitimately being hurt by harassment. The best thing for hurting people is to comfort them, not try and solve all their problems. For example, if a friend of yours gets bullied, you want to get revenge on the bully. But getting revenge doesn't build your friend up, it just tears yet another person down. There is a time and a place for getting justice, but being there for your friend and comforting them is best. I feel like documentaries and articles that spin issues with harassment into an "us versus them" debacle encourages hostility towards an opposing 'side'. This is often grossly generalized, and with feminists, the issue is framed as an indictment of men, all men. The problem with that is that most men are not harassing women, it is a very select few who do, and they also harass other men. Additionally, even though women tend to be more passive towards men, I'm certain there are instances where women harass men via video game chat. To take this a step further, I would say a bigger problem in gaming harassment is actually racism. Racism is used more often than sexism. I'm not just talking about some white kids throwing the n-word around. I mean everyone is racist towards everyone else. I know most of it is in jest, and some of it is to get a reaction, but some of it is legitimately nasty and cruel. Thanks for taking the time to give me this well reasoned post. As a straight white male, I often feel like it's not really my place to get into debates like this because I don't face the same level or type of descrimination minorities (female gamers, black gamers, ect) do. I don't feel like it marginalizes my problems to focus on the problems of minorities, but I do agree with you that it feels like these arguments are often missing the point that most gamers aren't like this, only a select few, and they're like this to everybody. Minorities just happen to be jucier targets. We should be working together to figure out a solution, not fighting eachother. Being thick skinned is pretty much essentially to playing games these days, which is unfortunate. I personally have been subjected to a lot of insults (and really who hasn't?), but the only ones that have ever really affected me have been instances where I shared some of my insecurities with somebody I thought I could trust and had them throw it in my face in front of my online friends, or responded to harassment rather than simply ignoring them when it became apparent how they were acting. I've never actually had somebody look up my facebook or anything that personal, thankfully, but I know it happens and it really bugs me. Just wanted to share where I was coming from. I do have to say I think the Sexism and Racism are equivallently prominent in gaming (and I find it interesting that you don't), but this might be skewed by my perception as an RTS gamer where both of these things are both quite rare (I don't know my opponent's ethnicity or gender in probably 99%+ of the games I play and typically get generic insults that could apply to anyone). Overall though I'm glad you at least don't blame gamers as a whole for he acts of a few. TBH this is my biggest problem with things like this documentary or GamerGate, it makes me feel like I'm being held personally responsible for something I'm not a part of. I have to say, there really isn't much variance in the amount of vitriol in RTS/FPS games as far as I can tell. I think every gaming community has their very own Clan X17 though. It's difficult to quantify the amount of harassment or types of harassment being exhibited, so I would say that I personally feel racism is a bigger issue than sexism. On March 09 2015 18:10 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 18:01 King David wrote:
This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone. Attitudes like these is precisely why we need documentaries like the one being discussed discussed. 1) this isn't about you 2) men are not abused to the same extent as women 3) these s outcries aren't old actually we haven't really had a serious discussion about harassment against women online until recently 4) g it's great how you presume to know how women should deal with their problems Are you a woman? Because if you're a man debating other men on what women feel, then maybe you should stop it. Men are, in fact, abused as much as women, although the kind of harassment is often quite different. If the same conclusion of "deal with it" is reached by the female gaming community, then alright. But it seems that the current dialogue points to areas where there can be improvement in the gaming community. i mean it seems pretty silly to assume any large populations that just happen to be groupable in some way can reach a meaningful consensus on any controversial issue. people have case-by-case idiosyncratic views on these issues, no conclusion will ever be "reached by the female gaming community" in an all-inclusive, "problem's solved" manner.
All the more so, then, the poverty of the views of male gamers with incomplete understanding of what is going on to be insisting that the problem is solved because there is none, or that it really is just a matter of growing thicker skin. Clearly shouldn't the answer be to let the girls have their divergence of views without us yelling them down by saying this isn't really a problem?
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On March 09 2015 13:10 Stratos_speAr wrote:
The amount of male gamers in this thread that are trying to justify the abuse that women get by saying, "well men get abused too!" is both astounding and depressing.
As GreenHorizons pointed out, women are sexually discriminated against far, far, far more often than men, and it goes much farther as well; there are far more frequent cases of death threats, stalking, etc. against women stemming from online interaction than against men. Sexism is so incredibly pervasive in gamer culture that it's laughable that people still try to deny it, and if you are, then you need to check yourself because you're part of the problem.
If you can't see the difference between insulting a man by calling him a "faggot" and insulting a gay man by calling him a "faggot" then you need to do some soul-searching. It's the same difference between calling a white man the N word vs. calling a black man the N word. One person is being insulted about something he's not, while the other is being insulted and ridiculed due to a fundamental part of his identity.
This same thing occurs with women in the gaming world. Similarly, when over 90% of rape victims are female and cultural discourse on rape is almost exclusively about women being the victims, threatening to rape someone is far more disturbing to a woman than a man, especially when human history has been almost exclusively patriarchal and rape as we understand it today was both legal and commonly encouraged throughout history.
The idea that you treat everyone 100% the same without regard for context is an incredibly childish and naive notion. There is context to everything in this world. Calling a white man the N word doesn't mean the same thing as calling a black man the N word, just as a black man saying the N word means something very different from a white man saying the N word. Calling a man a "slut" has a very different connotation than calling a woman a "slut" does.
So no, the abuse that women take in the gaming world is not the same as the abuse that men take. That is simply the excuse of a lazy, entitled, male-centered gaming culture that is afraid of change.
Another good post.
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I am very torn on this. On the one hand it's pretty clear that girls dont have it easy in the gaming community in fact I think it's probably true that as a girl you have to face way more bullshit. But we have to keep things in perspective: "Over the years, Ms. Haniver has endured all sorts of abuse as a female gamer." Abuse is a very serious term and I think it only very very rarely can be applied online. Sentences like this make it pretty hard to have a serious discussion about the topic. As a gamer male or female you often face bullshit from other players but just because someone is a huge dick and writes obnoxious stuff doesn't mean you have been "abused".
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On March 09 2015 01:05 travis wrote:
I really don't think the immature kids that talk to girl gamers like this are going after girl gamers. I think they are being dicks to everyone. Most guys, especially ones over 12, LOVE to have girls that play their games too.
In general this "defend girl gamers!" thing is ridiculous. Everyone has to deal with the shitty little immature trolls, not just girls.
The majority of this journalism on girl gamer equality is only a way for the producers of this content to make money. Which is why I didn't click the link.
'nuff said.
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On March 09 2015 19:31 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 19:25 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:On March 09 2015 19:15 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 18:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 17:52 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 15:05 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 12:05 ninazerg wrote:
Documentaries like this are always just ass-backwards. Nearly every girl who has played video games that I've known gets special treatment and is welcomed with open arms into communities as long as they aren't completely batshit insane or a psycho. Then again, if they have the looks, then being psycho is acceptable. Additionally, girl gamers with very poor skills in their respective games will get way more viewers than men if they have a webcam on.
I see men getting harassed all the time. "You suck", "Faggot", "Get cancer", "Commit suicide", "I hope you die", and so on, are examples of the awful stuff that male gamers will hear on a regular basis if they gravitate toward the wrong communities within gaming. This tells me that there is a bigger issue here, but it always seems like special interests groups want to hijack the conversation and make it about them. Always interesting to hear input from a female gamer on this. Think it might be worse in other genres (especially those with voice chat) like FPS, MOBA, ect? I kind of think more speech/visual interaction between players is where gaming is headed in general. I haven't really noticed too much difference between the RTS and FPS crowds, to be honest. A vast majority of my interactions with other players have been positive. There have been rare occasions where I've been harassed, and it sucked, but it didn't really have like a long-term effect on me as far as shaping my perception of gamers in general. It is out there, though. If you look at Youtube comments, people are horrible to each other there. I've made personal adjustments for certain things, but not everyone might be dealing with harassment as well as I have in the past. Here's where I start to diverge away from the view that this is a woman-only problem: Some people can take verbal punishment all day and laugh it off, and others crumble. That's not a gender thing. I've talked to men who have really taken some of the stuff said to them really hard. And I'm not marginalizing any woman's experience with harassment, either. I'm saying some people are okay and can deal with it and have a support system of friends they can vent to, and there are other people who are legitimately being hurt by harassment. The best thing for hurting people is to comfort them, not try and solve all their problems. For example, if a friend of yours gets bullied, you want to get revenge on the bully. But getting revenge doesn't build your friend up, it just tears yet another person down. There is a time and a place for getting justice, but being there for your friend and comforting them is best. I feel like documentaries and articles that spin issues with harassment into an "us versus them" debacle encourages hostility towards an opposing 'side'. This is often grossly generalized, and with feminists, the issue is framed as an indictment of men, all men. The problem with that is that most men are not harassing women, it is a very select few who do, and they also harass other men. Additionally, even though women tend to be more passive towards men, I'm certain there are instances where women harass men via video game chat. To take this a step further, I would say a bigger problem in gaming harassment is actually racism. Racism is used more often than sexism. I'm not just talking about some white kids throwing the n-word around. I mean everyone is racist towards everyone else. I know most of it is in jest, and some of it is to get a reaction, but some of it is legitimately nasty and cruel. Thanks for taking the time to give me this well reasoned post. As a straight white male, I often feel like it's not really my place to get into debates like this because I don't face the same level or type of descrimination minorities (female gamers, black gamers, ect) do. I don't feel like it marginalizes my problems to focus on the problems of minorities, but I do agree with you that it feels like these arguments are often missing the point that most gamers aren't like this, only a select few, and they're like this to everybody. Minorities just happen to be jucier targets. We should be working together to figure out a solution, not fighting eachother. Being thick skinned is pretty much essentially to playing games these days, which is unfortunate. I personally have been subjected to a lot of insults (and really who hasn't?), but the only ones that have ever really affected me have been instances where I shared some of my insecurities with somebody I thought I could trust and had them throw it in my face in front of my online friends, or responded to harassment rather than simply ignoring them when it became apparent how they were acting. I've never actually had somebody look up my facebook or anything that personal, thankfully, but I know it happens and it really bugs me. Just wanted to share where I was coming from. I do have to say I think the Sexism and Racism are equivallently prominent in gaming (and I find it interesting that you don't), but this might be skewed by my perception as an RTS gamer where both of these things are both quite rare (I don't know my opponent's ethnicity or gender in probably 99%+ of the games I play and typically get generic insults that could apply to anyone). Overall though I'm glad you at least don't blame gamers as a whole for he acts of a few. TBH this is my biggest problem with things like this documentary or GamerGate, it makes me feel like I'm being held personally responsible for something I'm not a part of. I have to say, there really isn't much variance in the amount of vitriol in RTS/FPS games as far as I can tell. I think every gaming community has their very own Clan X17 though. It's difficult to quantify the amount of harassment or types of harassment being exhibited, so I would say that I personally feel racism is a bigger issue than sexism. On March 09 2015 18:10 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 18:01 King David wrote:
This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone. Attitudes like these is precisely why we need documentaries like the one being discussed discussed. 1) this isn't about you 2) men are not abused to the same extent as women 3) these s outcries aren't old actually we haven't really had a serious discussion about harassment against women online until recently 4) g it's great how you presume to know how women should deal with their problems Are you a woman? Because if you're a man debating other men on what women feel, then maybe you should stop it. Men are, in fact, abused as much as women, although the kind of harassment is often quite different. If the same conclusion of "deal with it" is reached by the female gaming community, then alright. But it seems that the current dialogue points to areas where there can be improvement in the gaming community. i mean it seems pretty silly to assume any large populations that just happen to be groupable in some way can reach a meaningful consensus on any controversial issue. people have case-by-case idiosyncratic views on these issues, no conclusion will ever be "reached by the female gaming community" in an all-inclusive, "problem's solved" manner. All the more so, then, the poverty of the views of male gamers with incomplete understanding of what is going on to be insisting that the problem is solved because there is none, or that it really is just a matter of growing thicker skin. Clearly shouldn't the answer be to let the girls have their divergence of views without us yelling them down by saying this isn't really a problem?
ya that's not on me nor on a lot of people, but this kind of thread / this kind of documentary sure does bring that type of person out of the woodwork
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sorry i just tend to grow really sick of awareness as a false idol, because awareness campaigns of victimizers victimizing victims rarely actually gets the message of "don't victimize" across to the victimizers, just tends to get a lot of bystanders impotently discussing the matter and getting mad at each other for varying levels of sympathy.
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On March 09 2015 19:46 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 13:10 Stratos_speAr wrote:
The amount of male gamers in this thread that are trying to justify the abuse that women get by saying, "well men get abused too!" is both astounding and depressing.
As GreenHorizons pointed out, women are sexually discriminated against far, far, far more often than men, and it goes much farther as well; there are far more frequent cases of death threats, stalking, etc. against women stemming from online interaction than against men. Sexism is so incredibly pervasive in gamer culture that it's laughable that people still try to deny it, and if you are, then you need to check yourself because you're part of the problem.
If you can't see the difference between insulting a man by calling him a "faggot" and insulting a gay man by calling him a "faggot" then you need to do some soul-searching. It's the same difference between calling a white man the N word vs. calling a black man the N word. One person is being insulted about something he's not, while the other is being insulted and ridiculed due to a fundamental part of his identity.
This same thing occurs with women in the gaming world. Similarly, when over 90% of rape victims are female and cultural discourse on rape is almost exclusively about women being the victims, threatening to rape someone is far more disturbing to a woman than a man, especially when human history has been almost exclusively patriarchal and rape as we understand it today was both legal and commonly encouraged throughout history.
The idea that you treat everyone 100% the same without regard for context is an incredibly childish and naive notion. There is context to everything in this world. Calling a white man the N word doesn't mean the same thing as calling a black man the N word, just as a black man saying the N word means something very different from a white man saying the N word. Calling a man a "slut" has a very different connotation than calling a woman a "slut" does.
So no, the abuse that women take in the gaming world is not the same as the abuse that men take. That is simply the excuse of a lazy, entitled, male-centered gaming culture that is afraid of change. Another good post.
I feel like holding those points of views further encourages racism and sexism rather than stems them; but that's just me.
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On March 09 2015 20:26 Incognoto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 19:46 kwizach wrote:On March 09 2015 13:10 Stratos_speAr wrote:
The amount of male gamers in this thread that are trying to justify the abuse that women get by saying, "well men get abused too!" is both astounding and depressing.
As GreenHorizons pointed out, women are sexually discriminated against far, far, far more often than men, and it goes much farther as well; there are far more frequent cases of death threats, stalking, etc. against women stemming from online interaction than against men. Sexism is so incredibly pervasive in gamer culture that it's laughable that people still try to deny it, and if you are, then you need to check yourself because you're part of the problem.
If you can't see the difference between insulting a man by calling him a "faggot" and insulting a gay man by calling him a "faggot" then you need to do some soul-searching. It's the same difference between calling a white man the N word vs. calling a black man the N word. One person is being insulted about something he's not, while the other is being insulted and ridiculed due to a fundamental part of his identity.
This same thing occurs with women in the gaming world. Similarly, when over 90% of rape victims are female and cultural discourse on rape is almost exclusively about women being the victims, threatening to rape someone is far more disturbing to a woman than a man, especially when human history has been almost exclusively patriarchal and rape as we understand it today was both legal and commonly encouraged throughout history.
The idea that you treat everyone 100% the same without regard for context is an incredibly childish and naive notion. There is context to everything in this world. Calling a white man the N word doesn't mean the same thing as calling a black man the N word, just as a black man saying the N word means something very different from a white man saying the N word. Calling a man a "slut" has a very different connotation than calling a woman a "slut" does.
So no, the abuse that women take in the gaming world is not the same as the abuse that men take. That is simply the excuse of a lazy, entitled, male-centered gaming culture that is afraid of change. Another good post. I feel like holding those points of views further encourages racism and sexism rather than stems them; but that's just me.
Yes, that's just you being wrong.
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On March 09 2015 20:37 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 20:26 Incognoto wrote:On March 09 2015 19:46 kwizach wrote:On March 09 2015 13:10 Stratos_speAr wrote:
The amount of male gamers in this thread that are trying to justify the abuse that women get by saying, "well men get abused too!" is both astounding and depressing.
As GreenHorizons pointed out, women are sexually discriminated against far, far, far more often than men, and it goes much farther as well; there are far more frequent cases of death threats, stalking, etc. against women stemming from online interaction than against men. Sexism is so incredibly pervasive in gamer culture that it's laughable that people still try to deny it, and if you are, then you need to check yourself because you're part of the problem.
If you can't see the difference between insulting a man by calling him a "faggot" and insulting a gay man by calling him a "faggot" then you need to do some soul-searching. It's the same difference between calling a white man the N word vs. calling a black man the N word. One person is being insulted about something he's not, while the other is being insulted and ridiculed due to a fundamental part of his identity.
This same thing occurs with women in the gaming world. Similarly, when over 90% of rape victims are female and cultural discourse on rape is almost exclusively about women being the victims, threatening to rape someone is far more disturbing to a woman than a man, especially when human history has been almost exclusively patriarchal and rape as we understand it today was both legal and commonly encouraged throughout history.
The idea that you treat everyone 100% the same without regard for context is an incredibly childish and naive notion. There is context to everything in this world. Calling a white man the N word doesn't mean the same thing as calling a black man the N word, just as a black man saying the N word means something very different from a white man saying the N word. Calling a man a "slut" has a very different connotation than calling a woman a "slut" does.
So no, the abuse that women take in the gaming world is not the same as the abuse that men take. That is simply the excuse of a lazy, entitled, male-centered gaming culture that is afraid of change. Another good post. I feel like holding those points of views further encourages racism and sexism rather than stems them; but that's just me. Yes, that's just you being wrong.
Except he's not?
Making clear distinctions which highlight the differences between groups (and topics surrounding those groups) of course encourages discrimination. Discrimination of groups can't happen if those groups are too similar, because then there's nothing to latch onto.
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On March 09 2015 20:57 Dark_Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 20:37 kwizach wrote:On March 09 2015 20:26 Incognoto wrote:On March 09 2015 19:46 kwizach wrote:On March 09 2015 13:10 Stratos_speAr wrote:
The amount of male gamers in this thread that are trying to justify the abuse that women get by saying, "well men get abused too!" is both astounding and depressing.
As GreenHorizons pointed out, women are sexually discriminated against far, far, far more often than men, and it goes much farther as well; there are far more frequent cases of death threats, stalking, etc. against women stemming from online interaction than against men. Sexism is so incredibly pervasive in gamer culture that it's laughable that people still try to deny it, and if you are, then you need to check yourself because you're part of the problem.
If you can't see the difference between insulting a man by calling him a "faggot" and insulting a gay man by calling him a "faggot" then you need to do some soul-searching. It's the same difference between calling a white man the N word vs. calling a black man the N word. One person is being insulted about something he's not, while the other is being insulted and ridiculed due to a fundamental part of his identity.
This same thing occurs with women in the gaming world. Similarly, when over 90% of rape victims are female and cultural discourse on rape is almost exclusively about women being the victims, threatening to rape someone is far more disturbing to a woman than a man, especially when human history has been almost exclusively patriarchal and rape as we understand it today was both legal and commonly encouraged throughout history.
The idea that you treat everyone 100% the same without regard for context is an incredibly childish and naive notion. There is context to everything in this world. Calling a white man the N word doesn't mean the same thing as calling a black man the N word, just as a black man saying the N word means something very different from a white man saying the N word. Calling a man a "slut" has a very different connotation than calling a woman a "slut" does.
So no, the abuse that women take in the gaming world is not the same as the abuse that men take. That is simply the excuse of a lazy, entitled, male-centered gaming culture that is afraid of change. Another good post. I feel like holding those points of views further encourages racism and sexism rather than stems them; but that's just me. Yes, that's just you being wrong. Except he's not? Making clear distinctions which highlight the differences between groups (and topics surrounding those groups) of course encourages discrimination. Discrimination of groups can't happen if those groups are too similar, because then there's nothing to latch onto.
Except he is.
Denouncing the discrimination faced by blacks, homosexuals, women and other groups for being black, homosexual, women etc., and making such discrimination socially unacceptable is obviously the way to go to push back against, and suppress, such discrimination (even though it's a long process). Fighting against and denouncing racism/racist discriminations has made the U.S. considerably less racist than it was 60 years ago (although there's obviously still a long way to go), not more. "Let's pretend the problem of discrimination doesn't exist" doesn't actually fix it.
On another note, I can't help but notice that although most of the usual reactionary/sexist/anti-feminism TL posters have expectedly converged on this thread, some are still absent. I wonder when L1ghtning is going to make an appearance.
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That kind of topic bores me to death. As many said, men are getting abused too. Do you think being a "gay" on the internet is less of a problem than being a woman ? With all the "faggot" going around ? And what about all the racist slurs ? So what we need a documentary about gay people giving their feelings on the subject ? And then a documentary for people with different color skin ? And then for small people ? For people who didn't get the chance to go to school ?
There's no end to that. The constant victimization is really over the top right now, as playing the "victim" is the best way to propulse yourself to hollywood fame and all (zoe quinn, unknown developper of shit games known all around the world because she got "harassed" by 4chan - lolz).
Why not adressing the real problem which is the violence of interactions on the internet, the frustration people must feel to behave this way systematically, and the gaming "culture" as a whole which might promote certain type of behaviors ? And not just focus on "the victim of the month", the women, who are not, by the way, harassed more than others, but who just happens to respond differently to it.
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I think it is unfair to lump men together as harassers. At least that is how I feel after all this stuff, like all men are put into this same group. When people talk about harass of women, it is always a gender war issue.
And it is not. The harass comes from idiots that would do that to men as well if they could. In this case they they do it to girls. Some others do it to guys. Some do it to other races and some do it to people of different sexual preference.
This is not a gender issue, it is an issue of idiots doings bad things that nobody is try to stop.
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We seriously need some systems to punish toxic behaviour. Not in a sense of banning people for some stupid dick jokes they make with their friends, but for people who harass and abuse others in gaming.
I personally stopped playing LoL because the community was shit, and the DotA 2 community is in some parts heading in the same direction. It´s a shame to have to mute half of your team because they are less willing to normally communicate but rather flame around to get ... i dont know, maybe a feeling of superiority?
As for female gamers, the threats are on another level (because cheauvinistic and sexist jokes and harassments are a category filled to the brim) and additionally, if a girl gamer is identified and singled out, the flamers tend to identify her as the "weakest link" and focus on her, no matter how good or bad the communication was before.
There should be some anonymous system to pass judgement on reported cases of sexism or toxic behaviour in games, if a case has been reported and judged as e.g. blatant sexism by 10+ reviewers, the mods have a look and eventually take action. That way the community (at least those interested) could start working on cleaning up, and the final power to punish would be in the hands of the mods.
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Just ouf of interest…
How exactly do you define the gender (or skincolour, or sexual orientation) during a fucking Dota game? It really interests me... Why do These People actually know that they are dealing with a Girl or whatever?
+If you regulary «have to mute half your team» the issue most likely sits on your side of the screen. There is the occasional full blown idiot in a game (only shittalks, doesn’t even try to play) but honestly, you get one of these in like 1/30 games at most?)
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On March 09 2015 21:54 Velr wrote:
Just ouf of interest…
How exactly do you define the gender (or skincolour, or sexual orientation) during a fucking Dota game? It really interests me... Why do These People actually know that they are dealing with a Girl or whatever?
+If you regulary «have to mute half your team» the issue most likely sits on your side of the screen. There is the occasional full blown idiot in a game (only shittalks, doesn’t even try to play) but honestly, you get one of these in like 1/30 games at most?)
didnt-read-the-OP alert!! unaware-that-general-forum-isn't-exclusive-to-liquiddota alert!! in the specific case of dota, however, voice communication is usually the indicator. my bad i was stupid and didn't realize you were responding to the above post i'm dumb
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On March 09 2015 21:54 Velr wrote:
Just ouf of interest…
How exactly do you define the gender (or skincolour, or sexual orientation) during a fucking Dota game? It really interests me... Why do These People actually know that they are dealing with a Girl or whatever?
+If you regulary «have to mute half your team» the issue most likely sits on your side of the screen. There is the occasional full blown idiot in a game (only shittalks, doesn’t even try to play) but honestly, you get one of these in like 1/30 games at most?)
Talking about DotA/LoL was more focused to general toxical behaviour. If a teammate starts off the conversation with "mid or feed" or "uninstall please" and goes on in the same way right in / after the picking phase, i dont put up with this and tend to mute rather than cope with the discussion.
Gender and age can sometimes be heard from voice chat use, as for skincolour and sexual orientation - you just get called a ni**** or gay, doesnt interest anyone if you are or not. You get called a Nazi if you are from Germany a lot, aswell.
Rereading my post i didnt state anyhow that girls are flamed in DotA explicitly, i just talked about my personal experience with toxic behaviour in DotA.
Maybe you have better luck with your teammates, or you tend to be more forgiving than me, but i dont think that "the issue sits on my side of the screen" I just mute people who annoy me and go on with the game. So what? Thats what muting was made for.
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On March 09 2015 21:35 WhiteDog wrote:
That kind of topic bores me to death. As many said, men are getting abused too. Do you think being a "gay" on the internet is less of a problem than being a woman ? With all the "faggot" going around ? And what about all the racist slurs ? So what we need a documentary about gay people giving their feelings on the subject ? And then a documentary for people with different color skin ? And then for small people ? For people who didn't get the chance to go to school ?
There's no end to that. The constant victimization is really over the top right now, as playing the "victim" is the best way to propulse yourself to hollywood fame and all (zoe quinn, unknown developper of shit games known all around the world because she got "harassed" by 4chan - lolz).
Why not adressing the real problem which is the violence of interactions on the internet, the frustration people must feel to behave this way systematically, and the gaming "culture" as a whole which might promote certain type of behaviors ? And not just focus on "the victim of the month", the women, who are not, by the way, harassed more than others, but who just happens to respond differently to it.
Bingo. Well said.
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EPT
