By these people, I mean (some) male gamers:
Earlier this week, feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian posted the latest in a series of crowdfunded videos called Tropes vs. Women, devoted to aggregating and analyzing games that portray women as damsels in distress, ornamental eye candy, incidental victims, and other archetypes that tend to be written in service of and subordinate to male players and characters….
…Since the project launched on Kickstarter way back in 2012, the gaming community has been treated to an incessant, deeply paranoid campaign against Tropes vs. Women generally and Sarkeesian personally….now, she’s apparently spent the night with friends after contacting law enforcement about “some very scary threats” against her and her family. She’s published a page of extremely violent sexual threats from the person who apparently drove her to call the police; in it, the user mentions the location of her apartment and threatens to kill her parents, who the user names and claims to be able to find.
Sarkeesian has tweeted out that she’s safe. The good news is that some very prominent people in and around gaming and tech have weighed in on her project. The bad news is that such public encouragement may be making Sarkeesian even more of a target:
In this case, the vitriol might have been compounded by the support her latest video received from popular developers and media figures. Joss Whedon and William Gibson, among others, mentioned it, and Tim Schafer of Double Fine — known for Psychonauts and the Kickstarter-funded Broken Age — spent several hours fielding responses after urging everyone in game development to watch it “from start to finish.”
I started to write here about how this is a test of the gamer community, and the need to shame and shun and all that, but we know. We do. Take it as read.
And, of course, it ain’t just gamers, though it’s pretty damn obvious at this point that tech in general has a dude-bro problem. I’ve recently been engaged in efforts to respond to gender bias and sexual harassment on my own patch, science writing, so I know better than to suggest that this is an isolated pathology. The hate and genuine danger may vary by degree, but it’s hardly confined to one corner of contemporary life.
IOW: if this is a test, it’s a test that we’re all are taking. Judge for yourself whether, when or if we manage to pass it.
Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Tarquin and Lucretia, before 1579.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m afraid there’s a substantial number of gamers who have all the maturity and intellectual abilities of Eric Cartman, and revel in that state.
Interestingly enough, World of Warcraft has a number of very strong female NPCs who are accepted by the community as “kick ass” or whatever…Jaina Proudmore, Sylvanus Windrunner, and others. I think MMOs do a better job of this than some other genres for practical business purposes.
Pee Cee
I’d say it’s actually better now than in the past, but there are an awful lot of terribly sexist jackasses in the video gaming community that seem to think that because they’re behind a computer screen they’re totally anonymous and let their inner jackass out with impunity.
Felinious Wench
Thank you for highlighting this. My 9 and 12 year-old boys are really into gaming, and there are games I simply will not let them play due to how women are portrayed. I have explained to them that it is unacceptable to treat women like that or portray women like that, and yes, I get that their friends play it, but Mom is not cool with it and will never. be.
schrodinger's cat
Its not just gamers, as a graduate student in physics I have seen my fair share of male cliquishness and worse.
Professor
Why doesn’t the police go to court and seek a court order and identify this sick fellow? This is not a 1st amendment right any more, this is threatening behaviour and is a criminal offence. In England, some people were jailed for such an act. These people are sick.
Elizabelle
OT; gamers welcome, of course.
DC Area Balloon Juice meetups: one tonight, the second this Tuesday night, September 2nd
Please come drink and maybe dine with us at Murphy’s Irish Pub in Old Town Alexandria, in honor of the visiting Mr. and Mrs. efgoldman. They’ll arrive 7:30 to 8:00p; I will try to be there closer to 7:00 p with a Tunch clipboard or some Balloon Juice indicator. Second floor. And it’s $14.95 steak night, through 9 pm tonight.
Murphy’s Alexandria • 713 King Street, Alexandria, VA 22314 • 703.548-1717
http://murphyspub.com/murphys/alexandria/
We will meet again this coming Tuesday, in honor of the visiting Siubhan Duinne. Same place, time TBD.
RE Transport: car is good; plenty of on-street free parking after 6 or 7 p. (Check the meters.) FYI, Murphy’s is pretty close to Christ Church; you can park behind it and walk to Murphy’s …
Accessible via King Street Metro station (blue and yellow? line; there’s a shuttle bus OR you can hoof it, if you’re so inclined.)
Apologies for the short notice.
And we must do a DC city meetup at some point. Apologies to those for whom Old Town Alexandria is too far a trek. Someone else should take the lead on organizing it — you’ll get more notice, for one!
Shakezula
Nope, it is a test of society. I guess it would be comforting for non-gamers to say: ‘Oh it is those silly gamers,’ and maybe gamers like to think this is Their Struggle (sorry) but these guys don’t congeal out of pond scum.
cleek
the world in general has the problem. tech is just part of the world.
Elizabelle
Tom: my comment’s in moderation; possibly for too many links. It’s last minute notice of a BJ DC meetup tonight at Murphy’s Pub in Old Town Alexandria.
Carry on.
Belafon
@Felinious Wench: I’m curious which ones. I’m also curious if you have seen Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and what you think about the women in those.
schrodinger's cat
@cleek: Your kitteh has a major cute, my head exploded from the awesome adorableness that was her as a kitten.
cleek
@schrodinger’s cat:
heh :)
there’s plenty more where they came from!
http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/?cat=34
Roger Moore
I’m not sure if your choice of painting is the best illustration of the point, given that Lucretia chose suicide to remove the stain on her honor from having been raped. Yes, I have been re-reading Livy recently.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: OMG, that sounds like a plot of a bad Hindi movie.
BlinkingCat
She got $160,000 in a single drive for donations to make cheap videos that cost almost nothing to make because of all the negative attention she gets. I don’t feel bad for her, she is going to to keep raking in the money people basically throw at her.
Shakezula
@Elizabelle: Is there a Meetup group?
schrodinger's cat
@cleek: Thanks!
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: What eezzee theezze “gamers”?
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Did you get to the part where Brutus makes everyone swear on the bloody dagger to overthrow Tarquin the Proud? It does sound like something from a bad movie, but the historical evidence shows that the kings really were overthrown at that point, so there’s probably at least some truth to the backstory.
Belafon
@BlinkingCat: Really, so as long as your daughter earns money for being called a slut and harassed in public, you’d be OK with it?
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: All of science, unfortunately. For whatever reason, biology seems to have less of a problem with that sort of thing, but it is endemic.
Missouri Buckeye
@BlinkingCat: What’s a few death threats (including addresses of yourself and other family) as long as I’m making money, amirite?
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: It is probably because biology has more women students in the pipeline and probably more faculty members too.
Even chemistry has more women that physics.
Elizabelle
@Shakezula:
Doug is going to front page tonight’s (last minute!) BJ meetup in Old Town Alexandria.
7:00ish to whenever, Murphy’s Irish Pub on King Street in Alexandria, second floor.
We will do another this coming Tuesday night, in honor of Suibhan Duinne in the house.
Hope you can come!!
Violet
@cleek: Yeah, no kidding. It’s not like gamers are somehow separate from society or abusive behavior to women doesn’t happen elsewhere. Anne Laure posted about Mary Beard last night. She’s an academic in classical antiquity. She regularly gets abused online. Kristin Gillibrand posted about the casual sexist comments to her face from her male co-workers. It’s not like treating women poorly or objectifying them or abusing them doesn’t happen all over. It does.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: I have no idea what you are talking about, I am not that well versed in classics. My only exposure to Caesar and Brutus is Shakespeare’s play.
ShadeTail
It’s pervasive. I’m a gamer, and it really seems to be the majority, by far. I hope it isn’t, and that it’s just an extremely vocal minority, but I have a hard time believing that. Because it’s not just the angry sociopaths, it’s also the “reasonable” dudes who insist (falsely) that they do their best to engage Sarkeesian and her supporters, but they get “censored” or “shut down”. And when you show them proof of just how unreasonable and disengaged they really are, they just get passive-aggressive about it and refuse to acknowledge the clear and obvious facts.
Again, I really hope it’s the vocal minority, but they sure do seem to out-number the other side.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: Holy cow, High Concept! Let’s do lunch somewhere on Hollywood Blvd with some folks from Paramount, MGM, and Pixar!
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Makes sense.
It’s slowly slowly getting better in physics (c.f. http://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/womenphysics.cfm ). I think my department is something like 25ish percent women for the graduate student population, which puts us a bit above average but nowhere near the 50ish percent that ideally we should be seeing.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: The only thing I remember about Livy was that translating him was a slog. There was usually only one upper division Latin course per quarter and I hated it when I’d get the course guide and see that the next source was a historian. I should go back and try to refresh my knowledge, but I’m putting that off til retirement. So basically never.
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: How many women faculty do you have? I bet it is far less than 25%. I have taken physics classes where I was the only woman in class.
beergoggles
Most straight male gamers are assholes. This is why I refuse to play most MMOs unless my guildies and friends from previous games are moving to it or unless I can find an LGBT friendly guild. For instance I absolutely loved Wildstar but my friends are hooked on WoW, Champions Online or DCUO. So I tried the game for a couple months but then general chat just got to me enough that I just quit. It’s the same with most of the other new releases. I might like the game but I just can’t stand the people. The older I get the less tolerance I have to deal with the misogyny and homophobia. The game may be great but most times the community around it just sucks.
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, there’s even a Shakespeary version for your meeting with VDE: The Rape of Lucrece
And to throw on the pile of politicians, gamers et al not getting it, there’s Patronizing Lady weighing in from the UK political advert world.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Definitely less, on the order of ten percent. The “leaky pipeline” effect is certainly real.
Sloegin
Testosterone poisoned sociopaths exist. They like trope reinforcing games. It isn’t just games though. They like all trope-reinforcing media. Books, movies, TV, games, forums. They search out echo-chambers where they can be comfortable with other sociopaths. They feel threatened when people try to enable change on their various clubhouses and lash out.
Wait a minute. That kinda sounds like everyone on the internet…
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Probably because it has a less skewed gender distribution. Areas that are traditionally male dominated seem to have more of a problem with this kind of thing.
@schrodinger’s cat:
This was from a much earlier era of Roman history, at the end of the Monarchy and the beginning of the Republic. The basic story was that the last Roman king, Taquinus Superbus (Tarquin the Proud) was hated by his subjects as a tyrant but they were all too afraid of him to do anything about it. His son, Sextus Tarquinus raped Lucretia, the wife of his cousin, Lucius Tarquinus Collatinus. Lucretia told her father, Spurius Lucretius, about the rape, then committed suicide to wipe out the stain on her honor. Lucretius, Collatinus, and Lucius Junius Brutus*, who was a cousin of the Tarquins on his mother’s side, used the tragedy of her death to convince the populace to overcome their fear of the Tarquins and overthrow the monarchy. Collatinus and Brutus were elected consul in the first election under the new Republic, though Collatinus was shortly forced to resign and go into exile because he was seen as a threat to the Republic as a Tarquin by name.
*Lucius Junius Brutus was the distant ancestor of Marcus Junius Brutus, the assassin of Gaius Julius Caesar and later character in Shakespeare’s play. Marcus Brutus felt he had a special duty to prevent Caesar from making himself king, since his distant male-line ancestor was the man most responsible for overthrowing the monarchy in the first place.
The Moar You Know
@BlinkingCat: Considering that every mass shooting in this nation over the last twenty years has been carried out by a male whose primary interest always seems, for some reason, to be video games (followed only by losing his virginity) I don’t think $160,000 nearly covers the expense and hassle of having to essentially do your own self-funded version of the Witness Protection Program.
ETA: The gaming community in general is chock full of misogynists, homophobes, jerks, and wannabe murderers who thankfully lack the balls to carry through on their sick desires. I know that there are exceptions, our esteemed bloghost being one, but c’mon, folks, clean up your act. It’s not hard to act like a decent, non-crazy human being.
geg6
@BlinkingCat:
Jeez, could you sound any more like every asshole MRA that ever walked?
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: Thanks, I learned something new, I did not know that.
cleek
yeah, screw online gaming.
i only buy single player games anymore. i have no use for the aggressive abusive childish nimrods who dominate online games.
sparrow
@schrodinger’s cat: Not to get off topic, but as a woman in physics, it’s your basic “leaky pipeline” problem, and we lose women well before the undergraduate stage (and the pipe is still leaky from there). The essential problem is no longer overt sexism (though negative bias does persist), but that a lot of women still do not see physics and math as being subjects appropriate for females, even smart ones. This is a cultural problem and it is propagated by both men and women, possibly more so by women. I have only once or twice heard a man try to claim there is some essential difference between men and women in ability to do physics, I have heard it dozens of times from women (probably more, in fact).
I have started to respond to women saying “Oh I can’t do math, I’m just no good at it!” as if they are saying “I can’t read, I’m just no good at it!” It is equally ridiculous, in my opinion.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@geg6: I’ll ask here. Is there a universe in which “maybe poke some fun at you” is considered flirting? It sure as hell wouldn’t work with me, but was mentioned in the “I like my senators chubby thread.”
I am sincerely curious. Is this a new thing? It read as kinda PUAish to me, but I’m not that young anymore.
Lee
I’ve been gaming since there have been computer games & I have 2 daughters. One of which is a gamer. It is significantly better than it was but it still has a significant way to go.
There are quite a few people who make their living with gameplay videos. I can’t think of a single one that has this sort of behavior.
The problem is you have a large percent of young males that really enjoy just pissing people off (trash talking and otherwise) and she is a very easy target. She is an adult and she knew exactly the buzzsaw of problems she was walking into so I don’t feel too bad for her.
chopper
@BlinkingCat:
al gore is fat, also.
Marc
@The Moar You Know:
There are a hell of a lot of stereotypes in your post. Mentally imbalanced people can come from any community, and a single stalker does not represent a hobby pursued by millions of people. If you want to make gaming more inclusive it helps to not come in with a wall of negative attitudes about the gamers.
schrodinger's cat
@sparrow: My PhD thesis adviser was a woman, she was the only woman faculty in the department. She was far more harsh with her female graduate students than her male students. I learned this about her only too late, that’s why I am an ABD, someday I want to go back and finish. BTW, I was neither her first nor her last graduate student that she drove out of the program.
Villago Delenda Est
@beergoggles: The Proodmore realm of WoW is supposed to be an LBGT friendly place, but it’s also a high population server that may be difficult move a guild to.
I agree with you that WoW trade chat tends to be a wasteland of racism, sexism, homophobia, and what have you. I’ve developed a tolerance for it and tend to ignore it (or make snarky comments about the current juvenile trash being made) but YMMV, of course.
The WoW community is not one of the better ones I’ve seen in an MMO in general. It’s pretty easy to just eliminate trade chat from your chat box and restrict the chatter to guild and friends, when you happen to venture into one of the cities.
Lee
@beergoggles:
After the initial start of the game you can usually find guild that will advertise as “older, mature players”. Join one of those, then kill zone chat. Makes for a much better playing experience.
raven
MSNBC just had some gun asshole on that said “when there is a driveby shooting they don’t interview all the car dealers”. What a punk.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pee Cee:
The intertubes, in a nutshell.
pharniel
The narrower the niche the worse it is. Many ‘gamers’ self-identified when they sucked at other childhood pastimes and may have been bullied or harassed for being a ‘gamer’.
That’s a huge emotional sink into the ‘gamer’ identity and what being a ‘gamer’ means – there was an article recently on how ‘gamer’ is now nearly a pointless term – you might as well say ‘Music Lover’ for all the good it does you in telling anything about the person you’ve described.
Combine that with Sexism, bigotry, exclusion & a heaping of narcissism/sociopathy/psychopathy and you have the Captain Trillby that is the ‘gamer’ culture. There’s a reason MRA/PUA’s and ‘Gamers’ overlap quite a bit in membership – There’s a deeply held belief that life is a game and though unfair you can totally beat it. Except when people dare to suggest that you might have actually been playing in EZ mode the entire time. Then life is nothing like a game. You see a number of Glibritarians tucked in there as well; usually scientific racists/sexists. Hell Scalzi get’s huge amounts of hate for ‘white-knighting’ a/k/a suggesting that women are people too and have their own agency, but also Rock Paper Shotgun.
It’s even worse in the Table Top RPG industry where you get charming lads like James Desborugh (Author of “In Defense of Rape” followed up by a bajillionty blog posts about how tortured and edgy he is. He has since gone full MRA RedPill) who are your classic douche canoes all the way up to Zak S (of Gaming with Pornstars) who was banned from RPG for ‘Constantly arguing in bad faith’ – Classics such as “Assertion A has to be proven with scientific studies. I assert B. No I don’t have to provide scientific studies as my assertion is obviously true on its face.’ and “These people all +1’d a G+ post where someone accused James Desborugh of making a rape threat. Some random stranger totally tried to DOX the whole thing and his in depth counter-top inspecting has proven that this is false on the basis of the alleged victim not wanting to talk to him. If they don’t publicly apologize then you know they can never be trusted and are lying liars who always lie. And by ‘can never be trusted’ I mean I want them to never be hired ever again because you can’t trust them.” which led to a harassment campaign only seen the likes of elsewhere in such august domains as Comic Book Fandom and, oh look, computer gaming.
Hark – and article with almost the trifecta – Go Make Me a Sandwich
In essence many ‘Geek Alphas’ simply outsource their harassment in the classic “Will no one rid me of this troubling priest” style.
MomSense
@Violet:
Oh and here’s the former President of The George Washington University with his victims of sexual assault aren’t to blame but they should really drink less. FFS it is infuriating.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/former-gwu-president-women-rape-alcohol?utm_content=bufferd62f8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: I just give up. There are more assholes than not in this country.
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense: That guy is another asshole who needs to be escorted to a short pier over shark infested waters and prodded at pellet-gun point (but he doesn’t know it’s a pellet gun, wink!) to take a long walk.
What a fucking douchecanoe first class.
pharniel
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
‘Negging’ is from the PUA’s handbook and is a derivative of threatening to walk away from a deal in sales but really took off in the hands of Con Artists and Spies.
It’s a power allotment technique that serves a dual purpose – One it highlights flaws that the target hopefully is self-conscious about directing their attention inward and shaking confidence and Two it indicates that the speaker ‘has other options’ or is ‘just browsing’ because if they feel comfortable pointing out flaws to a near strangers then obviously they must be desirable enough that the target is considered non-vital. It’s a demonstration of power and attempt to usurp dominance and initiative. The idea is to make the target want to prove themselves to you instead of the other way around.
High risk/High reward play though.
Villago Delenda Est
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): It certainly seems that way, given the way our media tends to seek out assholes because they’re better for ratings.
beergoggles
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve played WoW since it was in beta and really need something new. I had a few friends in Spreading Taint at the time. The last time I played WoW I spent more time chatting with people and catching up than actually playing the game. But no matter how unpleasant public chat could be, it’s nice being able to have a safe-zone like a guild or alliance chat where none of that abuse in public chat is tolerated. So my WoW years were actually quite pleasant. My problem being it seems hard to find that kind of circle of people in the newer games so that I can just tune out general and have a group of friends to talk to.
I think the most accepting sense of community I experienced was in City of Heroes/Villains. I played that till it closed down purely because the people who still played that game just seemed less likely to go on a spittle flecked tirade of vulgarity.
Tom Levenson
@Elizabelle: Sorry I didn’t reply earlier — I left the house after posting for a bike ride w. my son. (Last week before he starts high school — got to take advantage!)
Glad to see it’s been dealt with.
scav
@raven: When Car dealers en masse are successfully lobbying that car drivers shouldn’t need to be licensed and that 8-year-olds should totally be driving souped-up tanks for shits and giggles, well then, maybe a few would get invites. duh.
Villago Delenda Est
@geg6: I’m sure he’s more than open for a few pro tips to perfect his craft.
BethanyAnne
@Villago Delenda Est: I play on Proudmoore-Horde. It’s a great server, though we are in a bit of a lull waiting for the new expansion. ESO only has 1 server, but the chat hasn’t been bad. Mostly it’s a pretty quiet game; I think people are mainly playing it as if it were a single-player Elder Scrolls game.
I donated to Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter, and the volume of hate and abuse she gets has me considering becoming a recurring sponsor of her nonprofit.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
Did you hear that they now make nail polish that is supposed to detect ‘rape drugs’ present in your drink?
Citizen_X
@Lee: @BlinkingCat: “I don’t feel too bad for her???” Jesus Christ, can you people fucking even read? She got death threats from someone who hunted down her address and her parents’ names. Fuck you, you minimizing fucks.
roc
@Lee:
Wasn’t a male streamer *just* swatted? People get harassed online. The trolls and the disturbed are looking for a reaction, so they use different approaches for different targets. I’m not going to argue that it happens more or less to any particular groups, or the approach is more or less harmful — because none of us have the necessary data to even begin such a discussion.
Roger Moore
@pharniel:
Isn’t that the meat of the PUA playbook? I got the impression that their goal was quantity over quality, so they’re willing to get shot down repeatedly as long as it happened quickly enough that they had plenty more chances to try.
Villago Delenda Est
@beergoggles: Ah, so been there, done that! :)
I absolutely loved the original Star Wars Galaxies. The community was inclusive and outstanding, the endless quoting of the movies was irresistible and fun, and the game itself was just a huge sandbox to play in.
The fact that it was so non-linear killed it, because most of the gaming community just can’t take responsibility for creating their own fun. Too hard, or something.
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense: I did, and if that works, I think it’s a terrific idea, a fashion accessory I can definitely get behind. It also will piss off a lot of fratboy twits who can’t get in a woman’s pants the old fashioned way…with charm, empathy, and an intense desire to make her pleasure your pleasure.
Tom Levenson
@Roger Moore: Yeah, the honor suicide is awful. But the depiction of the threat of violence against women is spot-on, and in this painting I even found one that is basically safe for work. So, don’t let the perfect (narrative) be the enemy of the good.
Or at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
I had a friend who was a PhD candidate in Linguistics at UCLA who was told that she would never get tenure because she had a child. It was a woman faculty member who told her this.
Villago Delenda Est
@BethanyAnne: Yeah, the lack of new content for oh, what, a year now? is taking its toll on the game. They really need to do a better job of spacing out the new content infusions.
Having said that, my fairly small guild will NEVER get to kill Garrosh on normal, let alone heroic, before the next xpac hits here in two and a half months, but we might be able to pull it off on flex. Just too difficult to rally enough warm bodies for a raid party, it seems.
beergoggles
@Villago Delenda Est: I heard it was the expansion and the whole jedi thing. I never did play Galaxies but knew plenty of people who did and they too have said what a stellar crowd of people they had.
I’m guessing I should be looking at almost dying games to find my next game then ;D
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
With that kind of attitude, I’m thinking your name has graced many a dance card.
pharniel
@Roger Moore:
Absolutably. I was thinking from a Tradecraft/Sales standpoint.
Burn Notice showcases this technique a few times for the less squicky version. Leverage also makes use of it.
But yeah – the PUA motto is “Doesn’t matter if it only works 1 time out of a 100 if I can use it 100 times in a night”
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: But as always, it does rather put all the onus of control and action on the women’s side of the relationship. Don’t dress certain ways, don’t drink do much, do stir your drink with a certain brand of nail polish (I’m not at all sure this form of stirring won’t be read as flirtations) and don’t forget the birth control’s mostly in her court too! Boys will be boys. Mummy and girlfriends will make it all better.
Botsplainer
I bet they’re all nice guys, and the women they know just want to date jerks.
Villago Delenda Est
@scav: Well, I do see your point there, but I think that using some defensive skills, such as the detecting nail polish, is simply a prudent approach to attempts to rig the game.
Elizabelle
@Tom Levenson:
Good luck to the rising freshman. Hope it was an excellent bike ride.
The Moar You Know
@Marc: Prove it. So far as I can tell, every one of my observations about gamers is 100% accurate. I also noticed that no one else here seems to have a problem with my “stereotypes”.
I don’t give two shits about making it more inclusive, or more anything that would make such a cesspit of an environment attractive to more people. Clean up your pet hobby’s fucking act and then we can talk.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Astronomy has long been an exception (perhaps not in gross numbers of women, but rather in full respect of those in the profession), at least in my encounters with courses and with professional astronomers.
Pogonip
@The Moar You Know: So what exactly is the gaming community, and, if they’re all horrid, why would anyone want to join in the first place? Is it video-game players? (When I think of “gaming,” I think of casinos, but I’m an old.)
Villago Delenda Est
@pharniel:
Very similar to the direct mail marketing game, or how spammers approach things. A 1% response rate is good, but if you get a 2% response rate, you’re golden.
Villago Delenda Est
Dupe nuked!
BethanyAnne
I guess the next MMO that I’m looking forward to is Pathfinder. I listened to an interview with the lead designer and it looked like they are trying something pretty interesting. Much more sandbox than theme park – if they can pull it off, then it could be really fun. For now, wandering around ESO is still fine.
Mnemosyne
@pharniel:
It’s kind of interesting that picking women up with these techniques is pretty much guaranteed to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: the kind of women (people, really) who respond to those techniques are going to be insecure and needy (and probably manipulative themselves), which MRAs constantly complain is what all women are like, but they continue to use the same techniques to attract more insecure and needy women. And round and round and round it goes …
Roger Moore
@beergoggles:
That was the impression I got from my brother, who worked as a tester for it. He definitely felt that they pissed off their most hardcore fans with the complete reworking of the game.
JaneE
Personal opinion – it is authoritarians in general – and they are everywhere, not just gaming, tech, et al. Most prevalent in the groups whose religion requires submissive womenfolk. Conservatives in the tea party sense. The 27%’ers who feel that theirs is the one true way (on whatever subject). Republican politicians are doing everything but explicitly calling for the death of their opponents. The supporters of the police in Ferguson are calling for the death of the people who disagree with them. I suspect that most of the most vile threats are from men, but women are also represented in hate groups. Any thing at all can set them off because they are not really rational to begin with.
Pee Cee
@cleek:
There are a lot of people in the gaming community like this. Either single player, couch co-op, or online only with people I actually know for me, please.
Villago Delenda Est
@beergoggles: At first, it was a great game. If they spent half as much time on fixing what was broken as they spent trying to emulate WoW, they would have had better success. Unfortunately, right after they released the third expansion, they also radically transformed the game and managed to drive off their (previously) most loyal players, who stuck with them even when they made it more WoW like the first time…they had to make it even MORE WoW like, without, naturally, the quality control of Blizzard. We are talking SOE here.
Eventually, the game was put out of its misery when The Old Republic came along, as Lucas didn’t want to have more than one “Star Wars” MMO in the marketplace at a time.
Mayken
@schrodinger’s cat: Sadly a well-known phenomena. The “exceptional woman” who doesn’t want to lose her status. Saw it a lot in the cycling industry. Seen surprisingly little of it in IT thank the gods. I was a little worried about my first woman boss but she turned out to be an awesome mentor to me.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: not arguing about defense exactly either (but hey, The Playing Hard to Get and Cocktease and Ice-Princess cards are next and dog-eared at that). It gets wearing to have alter one’s entire life and persona because boys can’t be bothered grow up and police themselves. see also the situation in Ferguson, with the dial raised still higher.
Anoniminous
@Mnemosyne:
Tenure is becoming an impossible goal for all but the tippity-top young scientists. (Defined as: someone who can get grant money.) Universities have discovered they can buy Post-Docs like kleenex: use them once or twice and then throw ’em in the trash can.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: At first, Jedi was something of a loot item…you unlocked your Jedi slot by mastering a random number of the 32 professions (what other games would call classes) in the game. Then they changed Jedi to a different system that was less grindy, but still pretty grindy…it was a minimum three month process to unlock your Jedi slot.
With the third iteration, they just gave up on Jedi being a reward for grinding, and made it so you could insta-create a Jedi from day one. The mystique of Jedi was lost…it was just another class based on the original D&D class templates. Nothing special about them, they were everywhere. The original concept was that Jedi were supposed to be not seen, as it was set in the aftermath of A New Hope. The original trilogy only had four characters who ever ignited a light saber. The prequel trilogy was Jedi all over the place. Fans of the original trilogy were fine with Jedi being rare…they’d rather be running around in stormtrooper armor anyways.. Kids who were introduced to the universe via the prequel trilogy wanted their light sabers RIGHT NAOW!
Mnemosyne
@Anoniminous:
Right, but she wasn’t told, Tenure is very hard to get. She was told, specifically, that because she was married and had a child, no university would give her tenure for those reasons. And she was told this at least a year or two before she was going to be defending her PhD.
Somebody always has to make the nobody gets tenure anymore claim when I tell this story, and I can always tell that they missed the point by a mile. It’s not okay to discriminate against someone just because tenure is very difficult to get. Full stop.
Anoniminous
One thing to note is the percentage of women gamers is becoming financially significant. Eventually some smart gaming company is going to notice and start coming down hard and even banning the misogynists.
Villago Delenda Est
@scav:
I give you George W. Bush.
These types will be with us always.
BethanyAnne
My original WoW guild on Dalaran-Alliance (wonderful people, still chat with some) had a small infestation of gamerbros one time. The GM explained to them once that if they insisted on treating guild chat like a boy’s locker room, it soon would be, cause all the women would leave. That stopped the immediate annoying chatter, and most slipped away quietly later. The few who stayed mostly turned out to be decent sorts.
geg6
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
It’s totally PUA/MRA-ish. In fact, not -ish at all. Straight up PUA/MRA woman hater’s club shit.
Violet
@MomSense: I heard that on the radio on Tuesday! Couldn’t believe it. Good thing I was exiting the freeway and coming up to a light at the time. I might have hurt someone otherwise. I love how he phrased it:
He’s got the “don’t blame the victim” wording down pat but then he completely contradicts himself. And “punch the guys in the nose”? It makes it sound cartoonish. And “if they misbehave”. WTF? Rape is not “misbehavior”. Does he think the guys just need a “time out”?
Part of the problem even when they think they’re part of the solution.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: So the world must invaribly and silently adapt to them without a word of protest.
You’re not really suggesting this.
YellowJournalism
@Anoniminous: Gamer Asshole Response: “Oh, but Candy Crush doesn’t count.”
Villago Delenda Est
@scav: No, I’m just saying that the problem will most likely never go away.
VIGILANCE! ETERNAL VIGILANCE!
/Mad-Eye Moody
MomSense
@Violet:
It was just such an infuriating thing to say. Makes me want to research incidences of sexual assault at the university while he was President.
Misbehaving. Wow. Just wow.
roc
@JaneE:
Except it’s not “anything at all” that sets them off. It’s very carefully crafted things that set them off. Very carefully crafted things that are very carefully aimed, timed and delivered directly to them. Things very carefully crafted, aimed, timed and delivered by people who intend to profit off the reaction.
And now we’ve stepped back far enough to see that it’s not just the 27%-ers. It’s pretty much any segment of the population with a clearly identifiable button that can be pressed to generate a predictable reaction.
Which is why we should all take a moment to do a bit of introspection and critical analysis any time an outrage-inducing story appears.
As “yes all women” just made clear: nearly every woman is subject to these abhorrent people and behaviors, in any media, in any audience, at any time of year. So why is an example of something all women suffer being pitched as a particular problem of a particular media and particular audience at this particular time by these particular players?
lethargytartare
@cleek:
agreed – I suspect this is one of the reasons why my latest obsession has been retrogaming. at least when pwnd, I’m pwnd without any additional abuse.
pseudonymous in nc
There was a piece published today about “the end of gamers” — that games now have a broader reach than young-male gamer subculture, and this is the angry reaction of that subculture no longer owning games:
Doesn’t stop that reaction being very very nasty, but it also doesn’t stop the games industry from having heavy institutional biases that privilege gamers, because gamers remain a big source of income. I don’t think Dan Golding’s right in declaring the end of the “gamer” until the industry and its hiring practices and its treatment of women from an inside perspective changes to reflect that broader reach.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
Because most people don’t take a problem seriously unless you can point to specific, concrete examples of the problem. It’s (relatively) easy to point to gaming because their are emails, message boards, game logs, etc. There is obvious, indisputable evidence.
So I find it quite ironic that when women finally have specific, indisputable evidence of sexism/misogyny, the complaint immediately becomes, But why are gamers being tagged with a problem that’s society-wide? It’s because you guys don’t fucking believe us when we tell you it’s society-wide and you demand evidence, and when we show you the evidence for a specific case, you claim that it’s society-wide and the people shown doing bad things shouldn’t be demonized.
It’s fucking irritating, to say the least.
Shinobi
It’s funny, because I am a female gamer, and I complain about this ALL THE TIME. (I’m that annoying feminist girl in Vent asking you not to say Rape over and over again.)
But watching this video of games I”ve played and enjoyed made me feel honestly sick to my stomach, seeing all the just casual violence.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: And I’m pushing the side of the weapon more into getting the opposition to pull up their pants and start behaving like grown-ups. GwB may forever be beyond the pale, but there in theory should be less ear-shut brain-deads that might eventually hear and catch a clue that there are other options.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@geg6: Thank you. I was assured in the lower thread that I just misunderstood and it meant “kidding around” – by a someone other than the poster. Though he assured me misunderstood his comment about Sen. Gillenbrand now being attractive to him after losing weight. Thus I remain confused, but don’t want to start a big thing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est: I might add that Jedi under the original system had a downside, of sorts.
There was a concept called “visibility” which was, in essence, if you’re seen by players (or humanoid NPCs) doing Jedi-Like things, such as igniting and using a light saber, using force powers, etc., you gained “visibility”. Gain enough “invisibility” and you became a target for player bounty hunters (modeled, natch on Boba Fett), who could pick up missions(quests) to off Jedi. The consequences of being killed by a bounty hunter included losing some of your accumulated experience that was used to further advance the skills of your player, and Jedi accumulated experience at distressingly low rates compared to non-Jedi professions.
The idea being that you’d have an incentive not to be seen as a Jedi. Don’t be flashing that saber, bro!
The third iteration of Jedi did away with this entire minigame completely.
Luthe
@sparrow: This is going to sound counter-intuitive, but the solution to keeping women in the sciences (esp. physics) is encouraging girls who are interested in science to go to women’s colleges. My alma mater, Bryn Mawr, had the third highest number of female physics majors in the country when I attended, most of whom went onto graduate study in physics (I was defeated by DiffEq and depression). The entire time I was there, I had one physics class with a guy in it. And it was only one guy.
Plus, women’s college grads take no shit from anyone after graduation. We’ve been in an environment where we were never talked over by men or thought of as inferior, so any time those things happen we speak up for ourselves.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shinobi: You’d like my WoW guild. Anyone talking about “raping” something would most likely find themselves guildless in a few seconds. I think the only thing that would more piss off our GM (a retired Army CSM) more would be to fire up one of those train sets during a lull in a raid.
lethargytartare
@roc:
well, for one, when you find sickness concentrated in a certain area, it is diagnostically useful to ponder why it is concentrated there.
Also, maybe this particular author, you know, enjoys writing about games. Is your position that no one should write about something that exists in place x if it also exists in all places? Like no one should complain about the causes and effects of poverty in their town because poverty is a problem everywhere?
Did you think about this before you posted, or was this just a 1st draft?
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Professor: Because the police can be just as much of bully boys as the asshats on the XBox network?
InternetDragons
@The Moar You Know:
I wasn’t going to post in this thread, but after your last comment I feel obligated to chime in.
I’m a woman who has been involved with the MMO gaming scene since the beginning. I have had a couple of part-time gigs doing dialogue and quest writing for big gaming companies (my actual career is completely unrelated; I just happen to enjoy writing and got a couple of nice ‘on the side’ offers).
I am currently in a heroic raiding guild in WoW (the ‘heroic’ just means we raid at high difficulty levels). In my guild, the only thing that will get you instantly kicked out, with no discussion and no second chance, is involvement with racist/sexist/homophobic/genrally bigoted talk.or behaviors.
I know far better than you do what we have to deal with in gaming. Your casual association of gaming with violent behavior is not only wrong, but perpetuates anti-gaming stereotypes that will NOT help us change the gaming environment. Scientifically speaking, so far there is neither a correlational nor a causal link between gaming content and violent behavior.
That doesn’t mean kids’ games and gaming activity shouldn’t be monitored, and it doesn’t mean we turn our backs on poisonous gaming content. I am not trying to be rude or confrontational here. I am just asking that you refrain from hanging on to a steretype that is without validity. It doesn’t help folks like me who are actually in the trenches of trying to manifest change in gaming.
Roger Moore
@MomSense:
I predict that will be very challenging as a result of the university failing to treat sexual assault seriously enough to keep adequate records.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ya, but gamers take it to real extremes. And not with the women for that mater, they will attack other guys with the same vitriol.
Second Life I’ve had to deal with a few; they seem to come in two categories in general – old men who see themselves as a failures and somehow blame women for it, and twenty somethings who are confused about their own sexuality (they go around with female avatars, have cyber sex with each other and then spend the next week proving they are NOT gay afterwards). One of the twenty somethings had the nerve to lecture me that this raging dude bro is how men are really supposed to act – ’cause a lack of self control and crying all the time is such a male virtue. The common thread is they all seem to be frozen in their pre-teen state of emotional development.
(put it this way – if you really a the old school sexist pig, why do you give a shit what a woman says to the point of attacking her? In that world view a woman isn’t an equal. Hitting her to force the woman to shut up when it gets annoying, yes, but stalking her and plotting her murder, no. That’s like getting upset over kids acting up)
iami
I’ve not seen all of Anita’s videos, but I’ve seen several. From what I’ve seen, they’re deeply tedious. They engage in extreme cherry-picking of “sexist” scenes from various games that prominently include both positive and negative female role models. Even in games in which the protagonist is an empowered (and not necessarily overtly sexualized) female, she still finds elements of “victimhood”–elements which happen to be common to the greater human experience rather than to just women–to condemn.
There is simply no way to “win” with her presented point of view (again, from what I’ve seen of her videos)–which leads me to suspect that she’s not really genuine in her effort. From what I can tell, her project seems to be more of a schlep for publicity (by specifically stirring and then pointing at the dedicated trolls of 4chan) than an actual, thoughtful critique of male chauvinism (which obviously exists) in the male-dominated world of *action* gaming.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Villago Delenda Est: WoW has more grownups and women (note: grownup women) than just about any gaming community I can think of, and because of the way play is structured, women are able to demand respect and get it.
But you don’t have to look far for some truly insane examples even within the MMO world where a significant number of players are a) not only looking for cheap ego thrills, not to play cooperatively b) trying to make money, as in real world money but c) treat the game as a sociopathy free zone, where you’re allowed to do whatever insanely anti-social thing you can think up just because you can and it’s okay, because it’s a game.
What’s really lame to me is that companies that make PC and console games have always dismissed women as players. Maybe in the early days when console games were for “kids”, that is rich kids, and even rich kids have this thing where boys get much larger allowances than girls, that made some sense, although it’s also been a self-fulfilling prophecy where toy companies will market some stupid half-assed piece of shit as a “girl’s” game when all the girls I know wanted to play games that don’t suck. But that changed many, many, many years ago and they’re still stuck on stupid.
The whole toy store is like that, actually. I mean, who wants a dildo pink skateboard, or a dildo pink helmet? Or some flimsy ass Barbie branded knockoff of something actually fun?
JimmyCrackedCorn
@The Moar You Know: Holy shit. This post exemplifies how people see something like vaccinations in autistic children and then think it causes autism. Video games are absolutely ubiquitous with people that age and it would be weirder if a young man didn’t play video games. I bet they watch a lot of tv and movies too (probably more than they play) but the media doesn’t talk about that because the old fogies who talk about the news watch tv themselves.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
One of my favorite tropes from SWG was the smuggler character who’d try to rip people off in one on one trades, and try to dismiss it as “I’m role-playing a thief!”. No, jackhole, you’re obviously not “role-playing” anything!
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
It’s the same sort of argument that the bigots who don’t want to be called bigots use. Ever wonder what the Venn diagram of racist bigots and sexist PUAs/MRAs looks like? Pretty much a circle, as far as I can tell.
InternetDragons
@iami:
“Deeply tedious”? You are trying awfully hard to be patronizing here, methinks.
And you are wanting “…an actual thoughtful critique of male chauvinism”?
Really? “Male chauvinism”? I don’t see that term used much. I think the sixties may be calling you to get their terminology back! And yes, I am absolutely being patronizing, but good lord. Your agenda is showing.
Thankfully, many game developers are very much capable of at least taking Sarkeesian’s work into consideration and in some cases initiating much-needed dialogue and thought regarding the portrayal of women in gaming. It is by no means an easy conversation, and there are not simple solutions. But at least they’re talking about it now.
But hey, I am sure that somewhere out there you can find a debate that you can “win” if that’s really what you are looking for.
gelfling545
@Lee: I’m sorry & really hope I am misunderstanding but this sounds an awful lot like “she shouldn’t have been in that neighborhood; dressed that way “
Kylroy
@Villago Delenda Est: One of the my proudest moments in WoW was when the leading raid guild on my (fairly backwater server) ran a pick-up group, and one of the randoms dropped “rape” into a pre-fight strategy conversation.
The raid leader stopped everything, specified the speaker, and said “Never say that word again. This is your only warning. If you do not heed it, you will be kicked immediately and blacklisted going forward. Understand?”
roc
@Mnemosyne: There’s no shortage of concrete examples on forums dedicated to any number of professions or hobbies. There were no shortage of links to examples during the “yes all women” campaign. It’s safe to say that if you’re still trying to convince someone the problem is real with new examples, you should probably just save your breath — you’re clearly talking to a person who does not have a reality-based position and will never be persuaded by data.
You might want to be careful with that broad brush. I’m not a person you’ve talked to, about this topic, before. I’m not a representative of any sort of tribe you seem to be projecting me into. I — a person distinct from people you seem to be confusing me with — am not asking “why” as a defense of gamers.
I know there’s a bigotry problem. And I know it’s bigger than casual misogyny and lazy archetypes and tropes. But I also know it’s not a sudden problem, nor is it particularly more vicious or prevalent than it is in any other field or on any other message board I’ve ever seen.
I’m asking “why”, rhetorically, because I don’t think very many people are critically wondering about messenger, timing and framing. To explain, let me spell out exactly “why” we’re reading this, from this person, aimed this way, timed like this:
1. Sarkeesian has a series of videos to promote, with a newly released installment, that frames the problem this exact way. It’s not a novel problem in society, so the only thing that separate these videos from the stacks of analysis and dissection of misogyny in culture, is novel framing. Retaining this framing is necessary for the differentiation of the product. Framing it fairly does not piss off gamers and generate further coverage elsewhere (like here). It gets the videos lumped into the aforementioned towering pile of pre-existing works that cover the pre-existing problem. Absent outrage, it’s very difficult to sell these works.
2. The Verge knows this evergreen topic, framed this exact way, is A. excellent for page views and B. absolutely primed to explode after the whole Zoe Quinn thing. They’ll inevitably be back to this well, when it comes time to write a post-mortem or reflection piece, on the “status” of the misogyny problem in gaming to wring even more hits out of it.
(Were I even slightly more cynical, I’d look at whether Sarkeesian adjusted her release schedule to explicitly take advantage of the Quinn thing.)
Coverage designed this way (feeding the outrage) is far better for hits and sales than saying “society has a problem. here’s how it impacts gaming.” Which would still be a worthwhile pursuit about a very real problem as it relates to the hobby but without any of the flinging of guilt/blame/recrimination that ensures absolutely no-one will be listening to each other, the pent-up energy pushing for actual change will be expended slinging mud instead of pursuing that change and the problem will continue to exist when the dust settles.
Lee
As others have pointed out Adult women gamers now double the number of under-18 boys
So when you gather sample statements from young boys, guess what? You get statements that sound like they come from young boys.
How about she get statements from the adult women and see how they compare? My guess is there is not as much money in it nor as much attention.
On the topic of women in science, an anecdotal bit is my oldest. She is a senior in high school and is very bright. Loves both math and science (specifically physics). When I mentioned about going into science in college she completely dismissed it with “Not enough money in it”.
Aimai
@BlinkingCat: fuck off
Mnemosyne
@roc:
So if an ongoing problem is identified, it can only be discussed once? Any further discussion of the problem or attempts to solve it is overkill?
Yes, I get that you think that Anita Sarkeesian is just an attention whore trying to make innocent gamers look bad (though it’s funny how she’s able to gather all of this data). I mean, why else would she be constantly drawing attention to an ongoing problem?
I will also say, you have to tackle a problem where you can identify and quantify it. Complaining that Sarkeesian isn’t attacking all of sexism, everywhere, on every part of the internet and IRL is basically dismissing the specific problem she has identified.
Aimai
@Luthe: glad to hear you say that. We are dropping the oldest aimai offspring at Smith right now. She has lined up chemistry and engineering as three out of four of her first semester courses. I mean right the fuck now. She is filling out paperwork and then we will unpack her into her dorm and leave.
Aimai
@roc: wow. Thats a lot of words to basically attack AN ACTIVIST and dismiss her work as a combination of performance art and opportunism. You might want to flip your accusation on its head and acknowledge that the death and rape threats are not the result of her opportunistically referring/puggybacking on the quinn affair but are simply endemic to womens lives on the internet. Women are experiencing this crAp all the time and the uptick you think you are seeing is epiphenomenal. Women are talking about it and trying to organize. They arent making it happen–they are responding to it.
roc
@lethargytartare:
Is it concentrated? Has that ever been demonstrated? Can anyone point to a trope in an action game that’s not present in an action movie or an action novel? Has anyone done a survey of the incidents of harassment at gamer-centric functions as compared to functions serving other industries or hobbies? Again: “Yes All Women” just told us that just about every woman has these experiences. How does “women in gaming also have these experiences” logically translate to “gaming has a particular problem with misogyny”?
And of course any writer is free to talk about games and how societal problems affect games and even posit that maybe games have particular problems. But that doesn’t justify igniting a two-side screamfest for fun and profit as a marketing strategy.
In your analogy of a writer covering poverty in their own town: suppose a writer was suggesting that Detroit has a particular problem with poverty because of the particular mindset and attitude of Detroiters. Can you see why framing the very real problem in that particular way might be seen as inflammatory and not particularly productive?
Did you actually think about what I said? Or did you tune out the moment you felt I wasn’t on “your side”?
(Hint: I’m not on “their side” either. The “sides” don’t even exist.)
roc
@Aimai:
Try to read my comments again. I said that exact thing, several times.
iami
@InternetDragons:
“But hey, I am sure that somewhere out there you can find a debate that you can “win” if that’s really what you are looking for.”
I’m not. I’m just sharing my limited observations in an open forum. However, feel free to continue making assumptions about my agenda.
cokane
I’m not sure there’s ever going to be a solution to online trolling of this sort.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
Actually, people point out all the time that a huge part of the problem in Detroit is the white flighters who went to the suburbs and have now spent 30+ years trying to destroy the city. Is your claim that if people were just nicer to the white flighters, they would stop being racist towards Detroit and the people who live there?
roc
@Mnemosyne:
I never, remotely, said any of that.
I never said anything like that either. I take issue with how Sarkeesian (and the gaming press) have framed the problem being particularly bad in gaming because of gamers. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with drawing attention to a problem that impacts gaming. There’s nothing wrong with concentrating your efforts specifically on that intersection between a problem that deeply matters to you and a bit of culture that deeply matters to you.
There’s something wrong with framing the problem in a counter-productive and inflammatory way. Didn’t we just have threads covering how counter-productive it was, to ask people to acknowledge a problem with a presentation that asks them to feel guilt and shame? Didn’t we just have threads covering how biased it is, to report on society-wide problems as unique products of subgroups? Reporting on black-on-black crime rates, without the context of white-on-white crime rates is the exact same style of mis-framing as reporting on misogyny in gaming as if it were a unique problem for gamers, without the context of misogyny in society as a whole.
There’s still plenty to study and talk about as relates to crime in black communities, just as there’s plenty to talk about as relates to misogyny in gaming. But no-one’s going to talk about those things when they’re framed in inflammatory ways.
Sarkeesian started her project 2 years ago. Has anyone had a productive conversation about the problem as a result? We can all see that the same sites are having the exact same threads. So do you think, just maybe, there might be something to the idea that the problem has been framed in a less-than-productive way?
InternetDragons
@iami:
Will do! Agendas are often pretty transparent; it’s best not to be too sensitive about being challenged in “open forums”.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
We did, but you don’t seem to have noticed how many people objected to the original premise.
So how should Sarkeesian be addressing the problem? Be specific. Also note that it is never, never the responsibility of the person being discriminated against to fix the problem. It is always the responsibility of the person or people acting in a discriminatory way to fix it.
So how, in your opinion, could Sarkeesian bring the problem to the attention of male gamers without being dismissed?
roc
@Mnemosyne:
How do you get this shit from what I’ve actually said? Are you trying to read sarcasm in somewhere, because you can’t see how someone can both agree that misogyny is a problem — and a problem in gaming — without accepting some notion that Sarkeesian and her approach are therefore appropriate and correct?
To spell it out explicitly: the analogy is “Detroit is poor because they vote-for/aid/abet Democrats and refuse to recognize that problem and make change” as compared to “Gaming is misogynist because gamers perpetrate/aid/abet misogyny and refuse to recognize that problem and make change”
Framing things this way guarantees that the named group will decry the speaker and thus appear to not want change, exactly as implied. Productive conversation will never happen. The problem will persist.
Pee Cee
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
In my experience (most recently, buying a bike for my daughter), it’s not just the limited color choice – it’s the fact that a lot of the fun toys are labeled “boys”. Bikes, for example. My daughter wanted a bike that:
1) Had a kickstand (and no training wheels)
2) Had actual gears and hand brakes
That’s it – basically something like a mountain bike for a kid her size. Looked at stores all over town for a girls’ bike with those features. Noticed that there were boys’ bikes in her size with the features she wanted, but girls bikes with those same features were two sizes larger – and too big for her to ride. It’s as if someone thought girls her age or height were incapable of using gears and hand brakes. Maddening.
(So we bought her a “boys'” bike. She loves it.)
Mayken
@Lee: Just because we are the majority doesn’t mean we own the space. See also: Ferguson, MO
As far as your daughter is concerned: not enough money compared to what? I have a friend who is an honest-to-god rocket scientist and she makes enough for her husband to be a SAHD to their two kids. They own two houses, two horses, two vehicles large enough to pull their two horse trailers and she travels all over the country doing horse events and he trains and competes in whatever marshal art takes his fancy. In Southern California, I might add.
Pee Cee
@Mayken:
You’re more likely to make money as just about any type of engineer than you are with a degree in a field like chemistry, physics, or biology. Especially if you’re going to try to get a job with an undergraduate degree.
Mayken
@Pee Cee: Not for nothing, but I worked in the bike industry for years so yeah way sexist. But I will say a couple of things: 1) you can always add a kick stand. 2) if you were looking very recently the model years are just changing and it’s possible that the rather more limited number of girls bikes (yes, once again sexism showing) were just plain sold out. I know that sounds odd, but I saw it a lot. Frankly, though, I think the “boys” bike frames are better – those silly down tubes on the “girls” bikes make the frames less stable. So you made the right choice anyway.
ETA: once upon a time they made “boys” bikes in more “neutral” colors as well because girls have always ridden them. They seem to have stopped doing that recently.
Incidentally my son actually wanted one of the “girls” bikes when we recently went to buy his new one for his 5th b-day. I would have let him if he insisted but I really HATE those damned frames so I was happy he changed his mind.
Jebediah, RBG
@Citizen_X:
What you said.
Mayken
@Pee Cee: Ah, well, there is that. My friend is a PhD and works for the government.
ETA: I live in a area with lots of PhDs and lots of military so my view of the money one makes in science may be a little skewed. Heh.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
So what’s your solution? Frankly, I can’t think of any situation where civil rights were moved forward because the people being discriminated against were nice and polite in their objections, but if you have a better idea, I’d like to hear it.
roc
@Mnemosyne:
Sarkeesian has zero power to fix the problem, so she of course doesn’t have the responsibility. Notably: neither does any other individual gamer have the power or, thus, the responsibility to fix “the problem”. They only have power over their own actions — and the overwhelming majority have never threatened to rape or murder anyone — so one could perhaps understand why they don’t appreciate being casually conflated with those who do.
Game makers have some power and thus responsibility. As does the press, convention-operators and forum-operators. Some game makers are making progress on this front. (some more than others) None of the press is. Very few of the forums are.
To go into specific details of “how people should talk about misogyny and gaming” would be to write my own series of articles or make my own videos. I think the high level makes it pretty clear though: focus on those with power to enforce better behavior and representation, don’t conflate “the community” with the bad actors, and stop taking as prima-facie evidence of “misogyny” every scene that seems to fall into a trope.
e.g. Particularly with works of fiction, you can’t just demand that writers never write a character that falls under some archetype nor any scene that can be abstracted to a trope. Sarkeesian plays far too fast and loose and surface-level with her ‘evidence’ of systematic misogynistic representation. It works when she’s picking at the marketing material — because there’s literally nothing else to marketing material. But not so much with many of her game examples. She’d be far better served by making her points with a deeper discussion that demonstrated the distinction between, say, a non-misogynistic game that happens to have a misogynistic character or scene and/or a seemingly harmless game that’s riddled with casual misogyny.
Because pointing to a series of gangster-simulators and saying “these have misogynistic characters and scenes” is not making a productive point. Of course they do. They’d be dishonest if they didn’t. If that’s the evidence, what exactly is the expected reply if not “of course we’re not going to stop making gangster-simulators”?
roc
@Mnemosyne:
Funny. I thought MLK Jr was pretty effective.
lethargytartare
@roc:
MLK was hardly nice and polite.
but tell the truth – do you have a dickwolves t-shirt?
Mnemosyne
@roc:
My, you certainly have a sanitized view of the Civil Rights Movement.
Here’s an activist having police dogs sicced on him.
Here are civil rights marchers having fire hoses turned on them.
But, yes, we got civil rights because Dr. King was nice and polite and didn’t make white people feel bad about themselves.
NobodySpecial
Seems to me as an old school gamer that misogyny and misanthropy are seemingly dominating games simply because the biggest examples of said gaming are shooters and semi-competitive MMO’s. Those are old-school dominance games where being a hardass is seen as a necessary component, and finishing second merely means ‘you’re the first loser’. Small wonder it attracts personalities hostile to women.
That said, I myself personally know of at least two dozen women around my friends who are not only gamers, but happy gamers. Funnily enough, they seem to be either married to or dating a whole bunch of straight white men, who supposedly are all misogynistic losers. I’m absolutely convinced the problem exists, but I’m also absolutely convinced that the vocality far outstrips the actual numbers.
One last point about the absurdity of lumping ‘gamers’ into one title – People who were pumping quarters into Pac-Man and Space Invaders are now in their 60’s. People who got an NES when they first came out are probably now in their 40’s, and a lot of them still game. It’s patently ridiculous to lump them in with teens and twentysomethings and call them a cohort.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
So, every time you’re on a game, if you see someone threaten to rape or murder another player, you immediately call them out and refuse to continue playing until they apologize or leave the game? Or do you just blow it off as part of the game?
That’s what your responsibility is as a gamer — to call that behavior out and refuse to accept it. Otherwise, you’re enabling bad behavior and passively letting the guys who do that know that it’s okay with you.
Arclite
@cleek: If you’re still interested in online gaming with a mature, polite crew, I suggest joining Gamers With Jobs. It’s mostly middle-aged folks. They have a great community and podcast too.
Arclite
@roc: Yes, a male gamer was just swatted. The anonymity of the internet brings out the best in people.
roc
@Mnemosyne:
That’s you projecting onto me arguments I never made, again. I never said he didn’t make anyone feel bad about themselves. I certainly never suggested a better approach was automatically sunshine and rainbows and victory. I said King was effective. Are you honestly suggesting he wasn’t? Or are you just driving the goal posts around so you can have something to argue about?
Arclite
@iami:
What you say is true. Here’s an example of her cherry picking. This game has one level of 20 that takes place in a strip club, and the game penalizes you for killing the strippers, but Anita’s video has footage of the hitman killing the strippers and dragging their bodies around. In dozens of online play-throughs, no actual gamers ever do this on this level. It’s not the designer’s intention, nor is it the way the game is meant to be played. And given the context of the game, a hit in a strip club is a perfectly valid location. There is absolutely sexism in gaming, but exaggerating and misrepresenting doesn’t help the cause.
Also, there’s some fishy stuff going on with that series of tweets that she said forced her to leave her house. The perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation is very out of character for the kind of person that would make such attacks. I’ll be very interested to see who they track down that made this series of threats.
The Other Chuck
@Belafon: What I’ve found about the easy drop-in and drop-out nature of Borderlands 2 multiplayer is that everyone is actually quite a bit more mellow and respectful, because no one really has to take shit from anyone else, they can just pop over to another game. It’s the only shooter I actually prefer to play multiplayer.
roc
@lethargytartare:
Yes, I have whatever trappings you want me to have, so you can feel better about standing me up as the personification of the other tribe. We certainly wouldn’t want you to have to entertain the notion that people can agree on problems and disagree on methods. The only possible reality is that I’m on “their side”. Whichever side you desperately want me to be on. That’s where I’m at. I’m “one of them”. I’m sure in your next post I’ll discover I’m a paid “one of them”.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
So what made him effective, in contrast to Sarkeesian’s approach? Again, if you’re going to criticize her approach, you need to have some kind of alternative in mind. Otherwise, you’re just whining that she makes you feel bad about gaming.
Mnemosyne
@Arclite:
If it’s not the designer’s intention, why does the game allow you to do it at all? I’m being serious — if the designer really, truly didn’t want players to be able to kill the strippers and drag the bodies around, they wouldn’t put that function into the game. You would shoot the stripper and the game would go, Sorry, not allowed — back to square one.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Honestly, I can’t say I’m a fan of Sarkeesian’s videos. They get kind of tedious and can end up little more than a scold.
That said, the important part is less her videos or her own personal opinions as it is the kneejerk reaction. The death threats are the most severe, but there’s the whole ‘oh, we’re the silenced majority, her cult is silencing opposite opinions!’ while simultaneously dismissing anyone who disagrees with her as a ‘Social Justice Warrior’ (good god, I hate that term and it’s baggage). It’s the same aggrieved persecution complex bullshit that I see from wingers all the time.
There’s also the dodge about ‘oh, boh sides do it, it’s so polarized, can’t we all get along?’. But lets face it, one side is the side slinging fucking death threats. So no, it’s not ‘both sides same thing’.
Which is why I’m pretty convinced this is not a ‘gamer’ problem. The larger percentage of males in the gaming population skews the view. This is a problem coming from the same vein as the bullshit from anti-choicers, from MRA activists, from the GOP base, etc. It’s a societal, tribal problem. This is the symptom of the larger freakout.
Arclite
@Mnemosyne: Yes, but MLK didn’t exaggerate or misrepresent what white people did to blacks. He didn’t have to. Anita doesn’t have to either, but she does. That’s the difference.
NobodySpecial
@Mnemosyne: It has a negative consequence. Placing invincible NPC’s in the middle of a game where realistic behavior (and yes, if you’re a ‘hitman’, you’re supposed to only kill your target and not anyone else) is encouraged would ruin the actual gameplay – if you treat NPC’s as merely invulnerable obstacles, they may as well be walls. You lose immersion. The fact that some sociopath COULD do this neither forces them to do this nor rewards them for doing this. It doesn’t mean the game designer is rewarding sociopathy.
If you want a true understanding of how it works, play Dishonored. You COULD kill everyone in your way if you wanted to – but the hardest achievement to get (and therefore most desirable) is to get in, kill your target, and get out with no one seeing you. It’s a choice, but most gamers with their heads wrapped correctly WILL try for ‘Ghost’ and will restart that level tons of times until they get it.
roc
@Mnemosyne:
I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw an explicit threat of rape or murder, but yeah, that would fall under Shitty Behavior and I call that out when I see it (along with the other forms of casual bigotry). Whenever I’ve been in a game where that’s occurred, I’ve taken whatever actions were available to stop it and refused to be party to it. Kick, ban, vote, report — whatever I’ve got and if all else fails, just call out the coward and drop.
I realize that’s a step more individuals could take. Most people I know that still do random matchmaking turn off voice altogether. That can certainly make it seem like there’s more silent complicity, to someone who is hearing that noxious crap. But I’d prefer game makers actually acknowledge reality and change the default options and thus expectations. Giving vile cretins an audience by default is asking for poison.
I know developers and publishers aren’t keen on allowing a playerbase to segregate itself — god forbid a new game appear to be empty because you allowed “Decent Human Beings” to identify, and only be matched with, each other. But I think that’s ultimately the way forward. Guilting gamers who don’t have the time/energy/personality to take a parental tone with every twat on the internet is just not scalable. 1. that’s what half the twats on the internet are looking for and sustained by and 2. I’m a natural asshole, so it works for me, but I’m aware not everyone is like me. And I wouldn’t want to be part of scene where anyone was vilified for not being like me.
roc
@Mnemosyne:
You can scroll up a few posts for that.
And what made King effective was not treating everyone who wasn’t already behind him as an enemy.
roc
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
There are not two sides. That’s the whole damn problem. Why would anyone accept the notion that there are two distinct sides? This is not a sporting competition. This is not a cable news shoutfest. There are not two teams and there won’t be one “winner”. Everyone (who is not a noxious cunt) can and should “win”. Approaching it as if there are “two sides” is a guaranteed way to ensure nothing can change and thus only the noxious cunts will win.
Arclite
@Mnemosyne:
Well, they *could* have made it that way, but games are more interesting when you have choices. Playing in an open world and trying different things is the essence of play. To the designers credit, while they didn’t outright forbid it, they penalize you for it. So if you’re a psychopath, you could essentially kill everyone in the game and complete the goal, but get the worst score possible, since assassins are all about stealth and precision, and going ISIS on everyone increases the likelihood of getting caught/killed.
Also, the kill-person-A,-drag-and-hide-their-body mechanic applies to everyone. To allow a player to do that to some NPCs but not others would be unrealistic, and counter to the spirit of the game, which is to present a situation and let the player choose how to accomplish the goal with a few rules in place. That kind of mental exercise is stimulating.
Honestly, Hitman isn’t my kind of game. I actually don’t like playing as the “bad guy.” But the problem here is that picking one scene out of one level is extreme cherry picking, a la the way James OKeefe edits his videos. Her message is getting lost with this kind of misrepresentation, since the misrepresentation becomes the issue, not the misogyny.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
Thank you for making it clear to everyone that we can ignore any opinions you have from now on.
Also, go fuck yourself, you misogynist asswipe.
uriel
@Arclite: Dear lord man, Thunderf00t? you’re going to use Thunderf00t as supporting evidence? The guy’s not just rabidly anti-feminist, he literally revels in misogyny. It’s like he takes onanistic pleasure in verbally abusing women. He’s every bit as bad as the worst MRA.
You’re really not helping your cause here.