This may be old news to gamers, but a reader just brought it to my attention:
Capcom and IGN recently put on a little online gaming “reality” show called Capcom’s Cross Assault, based on the game Street Fighter x Tekken. The show, like the game, pits a team of Street Fighter players against a Tekken team.
During a live stream of the ongoing battle on day five of the tournament, Twitch.tv community manager Jared Rea made a few remarks criticizing the assholish, and often misogynistic, comments of some of the fighters.
Here’s how the Penny Arcade Report summarized what followed. (I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting several particularly egregious comments in bold.)
“This is Aris,” a voice said on the feed. “If you don’t like onions, you get your sandwich without onions on it, man. This is the fighting game community.” He then stated that sexual harassment and the fighting game community are “one and the same thing.”
The voice belonged to Aris Bakhtanians, the coach of the Tekken team.
“The sexual harassment is part of the culture. If you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community… it doesn’t make sense to have that attitude. These things have been established for years,” Aris stated. He then noted that making sexual jokes at StarCraft players would be inappropriate, so it’s unfair for anyone to tell fighting game fans they can’t viciously mock women. …
“That’s what you’re trying to do to the fighting game community and it’s not right,” Aris continued. “It’s ethically wrong.” This may be the first time in the history of video games that someone had said that removing sexual harassment is ethically unjust.
Later in the, er, discussion, after someone brought up the harassment of a guy playing a female character (“someone yelling the world “bitch” over and over … and then scream[ing] for her rape when she lost”) Aris responded with this:
“What is unacceptable about that?” Aris asked. “There is nothing unacceptable about that. We’re in America! This isn’t North Korea! We can say what we want.”
You can listen to the whole discussion on this video; it starts, with Rea’s comments, at about one hour forty-five minutes in. (Aris starts commenting about two minutes later.)
Many more appalling details in the PA report post.
Oh, gaming community! Get it the fuck together.
First!
I see nothing wrong with the gaming communities use of competative put downs.
Everything not illegal is acceptable! America! America! If I say “America!” enough times that will be true!
Speaking of misogyny and gaming, I just found out about this recently:
http://www.destructoid.com/bioware-writer-s-vagina-versus-the-internet-222206.phtml
It happened a few months ago, apparently. The TL;DR is that a writer (female) for a video game company suggested an option to skip over combat sections in games, and many called open season on gender-based invective for it. PS it’s a feature plenty of games already have, more or less.
@mags: Trash talk is one thing. Bullying is another thing altogether.
Um. Last comment was me. I log the tulgey wood, and then I lug the trunks to the river.
@mags
Nobody’s surprised and nobody cares.
@magdelyn: Do you not get why using gender-based insults establishes that one gender is dominant and the other is subordinate?
If you call someone a woman as an insult, you reveal that you think being a woman is a problem.
Are you saying that you’re okay with the potential for being threatened with rape if you lose a game?
Did you read the OP, or the Penny Arcade article? Someone called for her to be raped… after she friggin’ lost. That’s not ‘competitive put downs’. I mean, it wouldn’t be during the match either, but then, you just have to defend misogyny, no matter what the circumstances, becaue you are a fool.
*Goes back to chilling in an awesome dress in Uncharted Waters Online*
The only woman in the top 100 MAGIC:THE GATHERING players worldwide also harassed:
http://www.themarysue.com/sexism-at-magic-tournament/
Here’s Moviebob’s excellent response to this bullshit http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5436-Not-Okay I think it sums up this whole state of affairs nicely.
Hey Aris, just because you have the right does not mean you should.
This quote does not quite fit but it is essentially the same sentiment: “Because an act is legal, according to the letter of the law, does not make it ethical.”
In other words, put a sock in it dillweed and learn some damn creativity in your trash talking.
Magdelyn: So, you’re ok with white players using racist slurs against black players, straight players using homophobic slurs against GLBT players? It’s just all good, competitive fun, and the marginalized groups who have the audacity to show MERIT and SKILL deserve to be treated like shit because the white boyz are afraid of the competition?
Uh-huh. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
I was active in mostly male parts of fandom in the seventies (and I could beat any of the guys at one, poker, and two, having read and remembered classic testosterone sf). I left after a few years, and when I came back into fandom (online media fandom) in 2003, I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy to be in a part of fandom dominated by women, from their teens to their sixties. It’s SO MUCH BETTER. It’s not perfect, nothing is, but good grief, SO MUCH BETTER.
This is the first time I’ve said this: but clearly gaming and other sff cultures could learn something from SPORTS:
https://encrypted.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&sa=X&ei=TcmET62eMOiw2wWgs5z1CA&ved=0CBgQvwUoAQ&q=racial+slurs+in+sports&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=6e3bd6a96aa2504a&biw=1280&bih=908&ion=1
Racist, Misogynistic, Homophobic, then FINE ‘EM!
Sexual harassment isn’t part of the gaming experience. Sexual harassment of women and/or LGBT people is part of the gaming experience.
The worst sexual harassment that happens to straight cis men is that someone calls them female or gay.
guys, did anyone know that magdelyn sees being lazily dismissive as a virtue? who would have guessed!
This looks like a job for MRA man!!!
Trying to stop misogynistic insults in the game community?! why that’s oppression of men is what it is!!!!!! how DARE you tell them they’re being assholes!
and he’s calling for the rape of a fictional character? he’s that butthurt over losing? creeeeeeeep.
The first time I played laser tag there was some jerk who kept boasting about having finished basic training and how much he was going to smoke us at this game.
Sure enough, he managed to rack up a big score, a wide gap between himself and the next guy.
He was very happy about that and kept taunting us about his prowess.
I was all, whatever, dude, so you pwned some n00bz. The game was obviously not challenging for you. I’m sure this is a big feather in your cap.
I haven’t ever been big on competition and the “competitive put-downs” always struck me as needless dick-wagging.
If we took the sexual harassment out of the fighting game community, it won’t be the same fighting game community by definition. We would end up with something much better for everyone. But no, you just keep on being all bullying and I will continue to spend my video game dollar on other types of games.
I’d like to predict that this guy will end up all alone because people won’t bother with him, but unfortunately it’s quite clear that there will always be people eager to hang out with this guy.
WOOP! WOOP!
CONDITION CHARTREUSE! CONDITION CHARTREUSE!
From the PA report:
“I’m just saying, for some people, ‘being themselves’ means doing sexist and racist things! That doesn’t mean that they are at all sexist or racist!” Yet another member of the “I don’t know why sexism and racism are bad, I but I know it’s insulting to call me sexist or racist” brigade.
someone who so passionately defends their right to make rape and misogynistic jokes are not someone I would want to be in a room alone with.
YES MRAs I AM IMPLYING THIS PERSON IS POSSIBLY DANGEROUS DEAL WITH IT.
@Falconer
BARRICADE THE DOORS!!! WOOP WOOP WOOP
I’m a gamer. I only try to play with friends who are also gamers because I don’t want to hear the misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, racist shit that goes on in online gaming communities. My friends and I do trash talk, but we do it in fun and we don’t use any slurs and we’re laughing the whole time.
Here are two great blogs about GWF (gaming while female)
http://www.notinthekitchenanymore.com/
http://fatuglyorslutty.com/
It’s like Manboobz in that it mocks the misogyny in online gaming.
@Magz so I assume you’re okay with cis gendered dudes screaming “Tranny” at you?
Viscaria – Yeah, there seems to be this huge distinction people want to make, like, “I’m not a racist, I’m just a person who does racist things sometimes!”
DUDE THAT’S WHAT THE WORD RACIST EVEN MEANS
As a gamer this stuff pisses me off because the kinds of people who say this bullshit are often the very same people who whinge about videogames not being taken seriously by the mainstream press. They don’t realise that this is unlikely to happen if they insist on using racist, misogynist, homophobic or anti trans slurs as such is not the language of those who deserve to be taken seriously.
And then those very same guys complain bitterly about how they can’t find women to date. Driving women out of your community and then telling everyone all about how justified you feel in doing so? Always a great way to ensure that you will have plenty of compatible women in your social circle.
I’ve got a comment in moderation but I’ve linked two great blogs about Gaming While Female.