'GTFO', New Documentary about Female Gamers - Page 51

On March 16 2015 21:49 Joan_of_Arc wrote:
The general level of discourse in this thread is deplorable, containing everything from victim blaming ('You shouldn't reveal that you're female then; it's asking for it') to false equivocation of experience ('Men get harassed too! If we can deal with it, obviously they should be able to') when the fact is that, overwhelmingly, the perspectives supplied in this thread and the criticisms of the documentary are presented by people with no experience with being a female, or being a female who experiences harassment online.

While it is true that men and women both experience harassment online, the harassment could hardly be said to be equal in scope or depth. How often do men get harassed throughout a game because of their voice, or have their play derided due to their gender? How often do male progamers have their fanclubs filled with vitriol and rape threats? We don't even need to look far afield to see that the level of harassment experienced is far from equal - if anyone else was around for the first days of Scalett's fanclub, I'm sure you remember it well enough.

On March 16 2015 22:30 Silvanel wrote:
I think there is nothing we can actualy do (policy wise) to prevent this sound of behavior in gaming. The root of the problem lies in society, we should be working on the basic level towards more tolerant society. Trying to eradicate verbal abus in gaming is treating the symptom rather than root cause.

I belive to correct response to verbal abuse in games is to ingnore it when it happens (so the abuser will get bored), and ostricise the abuser AFTERWARDS when things get calm. So case by case indyvidualy. I think there is no systemic change that would work

With that being said, i belive it is impossible to have 100% tolerant society, some level of sexism/racism/xenophobia/plain individual hatred will be always present.

On March 16 2015 22:39 Plansix wrote:

I sort of disagree. The behavior would could be dealt with if better reporting systems were in place to deal with harassers. Right now Ta lot of games have pretty toothless reporting systems that only work if someone is a serial offender for a very long time. If punishments came down faster and were less harsh(say a 2 day ban from Xbox live, steam games online) it would cut down a lot. Just think if being an asshole in Dota/SC2 got you banned from all valveBlizzard games for a couple of days.

There is a famous story from last year where someone was sending a women rape threats because she found out she played league of legends. He was dumb and through some detective work the woman found his facebook account and contacted his mother(he was like 14) and that was the end of it.

All it would take is the offenders to touch the stove a little more often and for the victims to have the ability to report the offenders. Right now the power dynamic is totally in favor of the harassers.

On March 16 2015 10:11 Hryul wrote:


i honestly don't understand how this isn't a case of severe doublethink. men and women are generally different on a hormonal level.

Very few developmental endpoints are truly “final”; instead, they are interim states, with the possibility of growth and change until death. This is the meaning of plasticity. In this ongoing process, the interaction of physiological and experiential variables is iterative, meaning that the current state of the organism interacts with each subsequent input—whether that input is experiential or physical (including biochemical). [...] As early as 1969 it was known that many of the “organizing” effects of hormones are not permanent, but are easily modifiable by experience. In a little-cited study by researchers at UCLA, for example, scientists found that allowing an androgenized female rat to have just two hours to adapt to a stud male completely eliminated the behavioral effects of prenatal testosterone injections (Clemens, Hiroi, and Gorski 1969). Money and Ehrhardt (1972, 85) suggested that “neonatal androgen may have rendered the females more sensitive to the copulatory environment, possibly to olfactory cues, in the manner that is usually typical of males. Once adapted to the environment, they became disinhibited. The behavior that was then released was not masculine in type, but the feminine response of lordosis” (emphasis added). Subsequent experiments have shown that a great many of the sex-typed behaviors that are supposedly permanently organized by prenatal hormones can be dramatically modified or even reversed by simple and relatively short-term behavioral interventions such as neonatal handling (Wakshlak and Weinstock 1990), early exposure to pups (in rats) (Leboucher 1989), and sexual experience (Hendricks, Lehman, and Oswalt 1982), to cite just a few examples. A recent very exciting example of plasticity in humans concerns dyslexia, a cognitive trait that has been theoretically linked to early testosterone and has even been examined in some brain organization studies as a marker of “masculinization” (for example, Götestam, Coates, and Ekstrand 1992). Simos and colleagues (2002) studied children with dyslexia before and after eighty hours of intensive remedial reading instruction. At the beginning of the study, magnetic source imaging showed that the children with dyslexia had a different pattern of brain activation compared with normal children with no reading problems. In particular, they showed very low signals associated with an area that is normally involved in phonological processing. Remarkably, after the intensive intervention the children not only made substantial improvement in their reading skills but also showed much larger signals associated with the phonological processing area that formerly showed low signals.

Another powerful example concerns spatial cognition—one of the hallmarks of psychosexual differences. Feng, Spence, and Pratt (2007) identified a basic information-processing capacity that underlies spatial cognition and showed that differences in this capacity (the distribution of spatial attention) are related to differences in the higher-level process of mental rotation ability. They then showed that a remarkably brief intervention— just ten hours of practice with an action video game—caused “substantial gains in both spatial attention and mental rotation, with women benefiting more than men” (850). The ten-hour training did not completely eliminate the sex difference, but it came extraordinarily close— the mean scores after training were no longer statistically distinguishable between males and females.

Thus, even though early hormones affect neural development, the language of “hardwiring,” “blueprints,” “latency,” “permanent organization,” and so on clearly conveys an inaccurate picture of the nature of early hormone effects on behavior. As Doell and Longino (1988) noted two decades ago, these metaphors fail to accurately capture how development really works. Even in rats, early hormone exposures do not create a solid foundation on which behavior must forever stand. At first glance the true process might seem to be captured by the notion of developmental “cascades,” which several organization theory researchers raised in their interviews with me. The notion of developmental cascades suggests that hormones don’t directly determine behavior, but create a small push in one direction, which is then amplified by experiences and other inputs that in turn trigger additional inputs, such that a tiny push at the front end can end up in a sizable difference in outcome. But this is only half the story— one in which the small initial differences almost inevitably grow larger as additional effects accumulate. But an early push in a certain direction can be either enhanced or entirely eliminated by subsequent experience, such that development from that point forward would proceed as though the early hormone exposure had never happened.

- Steroid hormones are important, but they aren’t best conceptualized as “sex hormones.” They do lots of things; “sex hormones” was the original conceptualization that drove the research and classification on hormones, but it doesn’t fit the data on what hormones do any better than other possible schemes. And the “sex hormone” framework demonstrably blocks recognition of complex and accurate information (Oudshoorn 1994; Fausto-Sterling 2000; Nehm and Young 2008).
- Personality traits and predispositions are not identical in individuals, but they are also not well captured by the binary system of gender (Witelson 1991)—even in spite of pervasive cognitive schemas that exert pressures toward this pattern. We aren’t blank slates, but we also aren’t pink and blue notepads.
- Brains develop only in interaction; input from the external world, as well as from one’s own sensory apparatus, is as critical to development of the brain as food and water are to the entire organism.
- Brains change and develop over the lifetime. Few inputs are irreversible. Even the animal experiments on brain organization showed that the “permanent” effects of early steroid hormone exposures could be eliminated or even reversed by fairly brief interventions in the physical and/or social environment.
- Gender relations change, and these are demonstrably related to changes in psychosexual outcomes. For example, structural-level shifts in education (removing barriers to admission for women to colleges and graduate programs, barring gender discrimination in funding, and so on) have quickly reshaped the landscape in terms of the proportion of college graduates who are female, as well as the sex composition of particular programs of study (accounting, law, medicine, biology, and so forth).

On March 16 2015 22:30 Silvanel wrote:
I think there is nothing we can actualy do (policy wise) to prevent this sound of behavior in gaming. The root of the problem lies in society, we should be working on the basic level towards more tolerant society. Trying to eradicate verbal abus in gaming is treating the symptom rather than root cause.

I belive to correct response to verbal abuse in games is to ingnore it when it happens (so the abuser will get bored), and ostricise the abuser AFTERWARDS when things get calm. So case by case indyvidualy. I think there is no systemic change that would work

With that being said, i belive it is impossible to have 100% tolerant society, some level of sexism/racism/xenophobia/plain individual hatred will be always present.

On March 16 2015 12:22 kwizach wrote:

The effects of hormones and their impact on possible differences between genders are widely discussed in neuroscience, and in recent years there have been many contributions highlighting that the role of hormones should not be overemphasized with regards to cognitive development and differentiation in behaviors between males and females. This is looked at extensively in Jordan-Young, RM (2011), Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences, which presents an analysis of the literature on the topic. To quote a rather lengthy passage of the final chapter (p. 288 onwards):


I'm not saying that there are no differences whatsoever on average between men and women on the cognitive level, but the small initial differences that have been identified (for example with regards to certain limited aspects of spatial recognition) are way smaller than people like GoTuNk make them out to be. These differences can in addition very well be bridged as people and brains develop, and they also only exist as averages, with both groups exhibiting greater variance within themselves than the difference in averages between the two groups. To quote Jordan-Young again (pp. 290-291):


The kind of male and female essentialization explaining different career paths that some have pushed here is simply not supported by the science so far. Meanwhile, and like I've said repeatedly, it is well documented that cultural factors have a huge impact on career choices. And hey, even if you believe that we'll one day discover fundamental biological differences between men and women on the cognitive level, how exactly does this mean that we should not fight against socially constructed sexist cultural norms that we already know have a negative impact?

On March 16 2015 23:41 Hryul wrote:

so your TLDR is that there do indeed exist differences (that most likely can be attributed to sexes) but they can be overwritten by out side stimuli.

and I'm not joining your fight against "sexist cultural norms" because I feel like there is a tension to personal freedom which gives me an uneasy feeling. I don't like being told what and what not to do. Neither do I like to tell others.

On March 16 2015 21:49 Joan_of_Arc wrote:
The general level of discourse in this thread is deplorable, containing everything from victim blaming ('You shouldn't reveal that you're female then; it's asking for it') to false equivocation of experience ('Men get harassed too! If we can deal with it, obviously they should be able to') when the fact is that, overwhelmingly, the perspectives supplied in this thread and the criticisms of the documentary are presented by people with no experience with being a female, or being a female who experiences harassment online.

While it is true that men and women both experience harassment online, the harassment could hardly be said to be equal in scope or depth. How often do men get harassed throughout a game because of their voice, or have their play derided due to their gender? How often do male progamers have their fanclubs filled with vitriol and rape threats? We don't even need to look far afield to see that the level of harassment experienced is far from equal - if anyone else was around for the first days of Scalett's fanclub, I'm sure you remember it well enough.

On March 16 2015 22:41 bardtown wrote:


You are deplorable, for wholesale buying into a paradigm of nonsense. When somebody blurts out 'victim blaming' and 'false equivocation' their feminist indoctrination is beyond blatant. There is nothing deplorable about rational discussion that doesn't fit with your bigotry, and there is nothing deplorable about people who think women are not so frail as to need special treatment at all times. You are deplorable, for ignoring the actual evidence and going with your own bias. Did you see the study somebody posted about how men are much more likely to receive abuse on twitter? That's not unique. Incontrol probably got more abuse than any other progamer in the scene, and we're not just talking about cholesterol jokes (you're using an anecdote, right?). We have a deepset biological disposition to care more about women than men.

But women can handle themselves. This documentary is not a representation of women in gaming, because actually most women do just get on with it, like men do, through abuse and trolling and all of it. This documentary is a representation of entitlement in modern western feminists, because they have a platform so why not? I do not have experience being a female, but I have a lot of experience of playing with females (and also with males who pretend to be females because they know it gets them special treatment) and I have experience being male. I have (and you can too!) compared experiences across the divide, and realised that there's not a lot in it.

It's not victim blaming to tell somebody to use the mute function. Is there anybody here who isn't forced to use it sometimes? Also the amount of times I have seen young boys getting bullied for the pitch of their voice by much older boys is beyond counting. They either shut up or they deal with it. Having your 'play derided because of your gender' is not a very serious offense, sorry. Certainly no more serious than a male being called a retard for being bad at a game.

On March 17 2015 01:58 Plansix wrote:
Yes, if you blame a person for getting beat up for the wearing a specific color shirt, you are victim blaming. Its a shitty thing to do and services little purpose beyond your own self edification. The person is already aware why they were abused and you are basically rubbing it in because you want to point out to them how stupid you think are.

And I love how criticism is code for "I want to act like a total ass to a victim of a horrible crime because it makes me feel smart." And its not like women online don't use the mute button. Clearly you did not read the article because it's main focus is on live events, abusive voice mails, emails and other forms of harassment.

Why are you commenting on an article you clearly only read the title?

On March 17 2015 02:06 Millitron wrote:

Because the thread has clearly moved away from just being about the article. It's about the whole situation now.

Negligence is a thing though. Is it victim blaming if a drunk driver crashes their car, and I say they probably shouldn't have been driving drunk? Is it victim blaming if I say someone who falls for one of those Nigerian Prince scam emails is stupid?

I have no sympathy for people who don't take even the slightest measures to protect themselves.

On March 17 2015 02:11 Plansix wrote:

So basically you have lots of opinions of stuff you didn't bother to read.

The drunk driver decided to get drunk and is only a victim of their own choices. The second is the victim of a well known scam and maybe should have known better, but its still the victim of a scam.

However, neither of these are sexual abuse or assault, which is what most victim blaming is in relation to. And if you are telling women to use the mute buttons, how do they do it at a live event where they have to be near their opponent? Or when they receive abusive voice mails? All because they just happen to be a women in gaming and the harassers decided they needed to be harassed.