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.
FF/PP/IR: You’re prickly little things, aren’t you?
In a way. It’s like grasping a nettle, best do it firmly.
So how’s by you? Got many blog hits lately? Bunch of people thanking you for revealing the dark underbelly of feminism to them; things they’d never known before?
Or is it more circle jerking?
Dave’s been noticed by the SPLC, when they said the MRM is misogynist, and has the trappings of a proto-hate movement. He’s been asked to speak on the subject.
You… have a game that never got past the blue-sky phase.
I do like seeing the number of male gamers commenting at The Escapist saying that this was an illuminating moment for them and they’re going to stop using the word “rape” as a synonym for “losing badly.” This is good.
Blitzgal: That’s good, every little bit helps.
Blitzgal: Have you got a link? I’ve never spent much time at The Escapist, and can’t seem to navigate it very well.
This is just to say
I have flame-ed
the trolls
that were in
the comments
And which
you were probably
wanting
for yourself
Forgive me
they were hilarious
so whiny
and butt-hurt.
I can not STAND the dumb shits who use rape to mean anything but rape.
No, you naive little shitheads, the Star Wars early episodes are NOT like rape. Neither is losing at Street Fighter, or celibacy into your mid-twenties, or any of that.
Do you know what’s like rape? Rape. Now fuck off and be glad you obviously have no idea what that feels like.
(And for anyone who tries to pull the I’m-so-smart “but what about getting killed?” bullshit… you might be speaking to a survivor of rape when you completely minimize that shit, but you ain’t NEVER going to do it to a survivor of death. And I think that if it turns out the person you’re saying it to just lost a relative to a drunk driver or police violence recently, you wouldn’t act like such a pretentious swine if they got pissy at you.)
Well, now I’ve gone and done it.
I posted a filk of the plums poem.
When are the Nielsen-Haydens going to take possession of this blog?
D:
They just found a dead body in the reservoir across the street from me.
O_O
Well. There goes my cool for the day.
@Petra Lorre,
That’s…that’s just…wow. In a moment of anger, right now, so forgive what I’m about to say: I hope he dies. In a fire. And not from the smoke.
Falconer: I was going to ask if you have ever spent time at ML.
Alex: I’m not being snarky. I understand your pain, and I know that you know what you said, and that you needed to say it.
And I forgive you.
It’s fairly well known that Aris Bakhtanians is a scumbag of the highest caliber. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but rather illustrates why he shouldn’t be allowed to partipate in any sponsored competitions. At this point, I’m fairly certain the sponsor’s agree. His asshattery caused a bit of uproar, of which he was initially unapologetic. He finally apologized but it was a faux-pology and they just about had to twist his arm off to make it.
@LBT: Dead body near your home? Whoa, that’s creepy. I hope you can find your cool again.
@Alex: The account of Aris’ harassment made me sick, but I didn’t get angry at it (oh hai thar privilege), so I’m not one sinned against, but I forgive you and I hope you feel better.
@Pecunium: I don’t always flame trolls in light verse, but when I do, I take my inspiration from Making Light.
Stay witty, my friends.
Falconer: I got a lot of my online chops from RASSFF, and ML. It made my personal blogging a lot better, when I got around to it. It’s also been, like Manboobz, a place of solace and comfort, for the people who inhabit the comments.
Right now abi is talking about sexism, and this thread is amazingly parallel, in some of the ways it deals with the asshats.
Whoops, sorry about that. I thought I got to The Escapist from David’s post, but I think it was earlier in this comment thread. Here it is: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5436-Not-Okay
First comment:
There are a bunch of replies to him echoing the same thing. More agreements than trolls.
RE: Falconer
Workplace. Near my home, there’s just that guy who beat a woman in the street. -_- I still see him every couple weeks or so; I can only be thankful he doesn’t recognize me as that mouthy twerp who got in his face to stop him.
Sometimes it’s a wonder I’m an optimist.
I kind of love you right now.
LBT: the one in Chestnut Hill?
Or is there a sudden plague of people turning up dead in reservoirs nationwide…? :-/
Mra’s often point out specific women as proof that women have never been held back from getting into male dominated occupations. Elizabeth Blackwell became a doctor before 1850 for instance so this proves that women could enter the field if they wanted to, instead they choose not to.
Listening to Miranda’s voice and her laughing at their comments about her body etc reminds me very much of what it was like to be a female property developer in the 80’s, and honestly even today on occasion. (Except I don’t have to put up with it now, one strike is a warning)
In the late 80’s starting out I’d put up with a contractor (my employee) commenting on my tits etc. by ignoring the statement or sometimes I admit even laughing then changing the subject.
It bothered me but it also bothered my bottom line much more not to get the job done on time, and those that wouldn’t make those comments were few and far between. I became pretty jaded in a lot of ways, it took a great deal of crap to get any rise from me and after awhile you just didn’t hear it anymore.
Miranda and her ilk are going through the same thing.
It takes a lot to rise to the top in your field male or female, but when you have to daily go through the gauntlet of being spoken to as an outsider who is verbally whipped it can be almost impossible.
Mra’s will never understand this. In their mind pledge week is something women should endure endlessly if they want to achieve.
Thanks, guys. 🙂 On principle, I’m against violence, and would never actively support it, but yeah, just needed to say it. And, also, I absolutely love people’s ability to write poetry on demand here. Makes things bearable, or something.
Seconded. That was wonderful.
RE: PDA
That’s the one. D: Jeez, I walk around there every day!
Looks like it’s that BC kid they’ve been looking for.
21. So sad.
@Polliwog, @Cloudiah: D’aww, thank you both so much.
@LBT: Double yeesh. And I’m sorry to hear about the abusive asshole on your street, but I’m glad he doesn’t recognize you.
Last fall, one night after dark there was a woman calling for help, calling for someone to call the police, on my street not two doors down from me. I called the police, but I’m afraid I chickened out and tried to stay away from the windows lest I get recognized. I’m allergic to punching; I break out in bruises. I wish I were as brave as you, LBT, is what I’m saying.
@PDA: Oh, that’s so sad. What a terrible thing. But, if it is him, I hope his family is comforted in some small way by knowing what happened to him, and not tormented even more.
RE: PDA
Shit. Not surprised; I figured it was probably him. But oh god, that means he was in the reservoir for frickin’ MONTHS while I walked around it! D: D: D:
And oh god, yesterday I saw a seagull eating at something in there, and I couldn’t tell what it was… I thought it was a fish… okay, I need to stop before I talk myself into extreme horror and I’m already D: enough.
Poor guy. This sounds like a really stupid thing to say, seeing as he’s dead and all, but I hope he at least didn’t suffer too much. …and that I was wrong and the seagull… didn’t eat him…
OH GOD I AM MAKING D: FACE IRL.
RE: Falconer
Enh, she was unconscious (or at least performing a very convincing imitation of it) in the street, and I was the nearest person. I had more HP and figured I’d be less likely to end up hospitalized and also more likely to successfully press charges, so I started screaming profanity at him and calling the cops. The only reason I think I had the testicular fortitude is because I was already angry (at an INTERNET TROLL of all things!) and dammit, people just shouldn’t DO that shit!
She didn’t press charges, he didn’t attack me, veered off at the last minute, and he’s still walking free. I kinda wish he HAD succeeded at that tackle; at least he would’ve ended up in jail.