So the top post in the Men’s Rights subreddit for a time yesterday, with hundreds of upvotes, was a post devoted to the question: “Why should male gamers change their behavior?” Yep, apparently the sacred right of men and boys to harass women and girls on Xbox live is one of the most important Men’s Rights issues of the day. Here’s how the OP, IsItRacistToAsk, framed the issue:
[G]amers themselves (until relatively recently) were a 90% male community. This goes back really far if you count non-video-game games (like Dungeons and Dragons and the like). Now all of a sudden they’re expected to just behave differently because some girls want to join?
I’m not saying girls shouldn’t be welcome in gaming communities, I’m just comparing them to someone who shows up, uninvited, to a house party and demands everyone go out and get blue plastic cups because red offends her.
Well, no, it’s more like a girl or a woman going to a public event, open to everyone, and facing a small army of creepy dudes who come up to her making sandwich jokes and calling her a bitch and a whore and a fat slut and demanding that she show her tits and when she refuses telling her “I hope your vibrator shorts out and fries your fucking vagina.”
The OP’s response to harassment? Well, guy gamers regularly get called “faggot” and “n*gger,” so girls and women should just suck it up.
Yeah, it would be too much to ask to suggest that guy gamers actually stop calling each other racist and homophobic slurs as well. Because, really, how can you possibly enjoy Call of Duty without calling some guy who’s just shot you a “fag.” Seriously, gals, you need to model yourselves on the mostly straight white dudes of Reddit who really don’t mind when people call them “n*ggers” and “fags.”
The discussion (more than 700 comments worth at the moment) is about as terrible as you might expect, filled with epic shitlordery and self-congratulation and calls for the gals to “man the fuck up,” with only a handful of commenters having anything bad to say about the culture of harassment in online gaming. Indeed, most of the gamers in the conversation seem to feel proud that online gaming culture is as shitty as it is.
Some highlights:
JonLR won himself more than a hundred upvotes for this self-congratulatory assholery:
By asking to never be made fun of, they’re essentially asking for special treatment. These days, ‘gamer girls’ go on and on about wanting to be treated like everyone else, but then cry when they are?
I used to play Quake 1 online, and a lot of the players knew I was short (5’7″). I got called a fucking midget every game, haha. My asian clanmate got called a chink every game. Fat people got called fat, girl players got called sluts, everyone made fun of everyone. No one cared. It was all aimed at throwing people off their game.
What the fuck happened in the past 15 years that made it the worst thing imaginable to insult a girl in gaming? Whatever it was, it’s embarrassing to witness.
Oneiorosgrip got nearly two hundred upvotes for her special snowflaking:
I’m not a video gamer – long time tabletop gamer though…
Remembering when I was the only girl in the group, it strikes me that modern gamer girls are spoiled princesses who expect to walk a path they did not forge, without ever seeing any of the dirt along the side. Those of use who played before there was internet, before there was linking between video game systems… before there were RPGs on video game systems, for that matter… we didn’t earn our place among the gaming community by whining about shit like that. You had to be able to take it, and dish back, or you took your dice and went home.
I took my dice and went home only once, and found that to be a wholly unsatisfying response. After that, I learned to eschew restraint and mouth off in kind. That was more effective, and more fun, and I think it would be the more appropriate handling of today’s gaming environment, as well.
In other words, IMO, modern girl gamers really just need to man the fuck up.
Men’s Rights subreddit regular Demonspawn was his normal charming self:
Men take the shit to make a niche, once it’s successful women want to take it over.
This is the world order, nothing new about it. I’m just glad that gamers are finally saying “No.”
Sidetracking got dozens of upvotes for suggesting that women and girls just hide their identity and pretend to be guys, because gamer girls who acknowledge their gender online are just attention whores hungry for female privilege anyway:
When anybody plays a video game, without talking, they are pretty much concealed. Nobody really knows what gender, age, etc. In real life, girls expect this privileged talking, because people want to engage in intercourse with them, however, over a video game, this privilege is gone. In order to get the privilege back they say “Hey, I’m a girl”, not knowing that this privilege is completely removed over the internet. Then they get over-sensitized when someone calls them a bad name, when they don’t realize that pretty much everyone calls anyone out over the internet.
Daysleepin83 also got dozens of upvotes for talking about the kinds of “gamer girls” he hates the most: The ones who complain and the ones who, evidently,wear no clothes.
For the most part i really don’t give two shits about what sex my opponent is.
But there are two types of “gamer girls” that really piss me off. There are those like Anita Sarkeesian who seem to bitch and nag about all that is sexist and wrong with video games. Doesn’t really offer any solution to the problems she digs up, aside from telling us we need to change. …
Then there is the second group, they don’t so much as piss me off but more like aggravate me. The sexy gamer girl. … Could she be a legitimate gamer? Sure of course she could be. I could also one day become the Pope. Till she puts some clothing on and picks up that controller i am not going to take her serious as a gamer.
MrDorph explained that he hates those “girl gamers” who “have to shove down your throat.” (Shove what? Your own assholery?)
The issue I have is girl gamers who have to shove down your throat. I imagine the majority just don’t give a shit and tend not to talk or if they do its not provocative. The moment I hear “hey guys” I leave, I can’t be bothered with the shit storm that comes with it.
Ghebert001 told the “poor things” to get used to shitty treatment, in online gaming and everywhere else:
Bottom line is women need to learn to adapt to the “environment” (environment meaning gaming community, workplace, etc.) instead of always expecting that the “environment” adapt to them and use language like “it makes me uncomfortable” to shame others in that “environment” to accommodate them at their own expense.
Throwing in the obligatory, “women” =/= all women…don’t want to offend the poor things. Oh wait, there I go accommodating again!
Yourotherusername wins points for pomposity with this response to the OP:
Well put. Like many things, the environment of gaming has it’s own language. It isn’t the language of Shakespeare or high-finance. It’s high context communication. It’s code. It isn’t (usually) to be take at face value. The problem for the people who complain, is that the marketers who attracted them to play the game, didn’t tell them how the game is played and the vocabulary needed.
If a person hangs out with a group of people not in their normal click, they need to understand that what is being said, might not actually be what was meant, and until they grasp the context, they need to keep their mouth shut if they don’t want to look like an asshole. I’d much rather ‘learn the language’ than try to change a sub-culture.
Take reddit for example. Expect masturbation jokes. Expect memes. Expect stereotypes. But in all of that, you will find that once you adapt and understand the context, it becomes more than a middle school locker room (especially in the smaller subreddits). IF you are so bold as to challenge the nature of communication on Reddit by admonishing others and trying to get them to change their way, you will be anathema, and most likely down voted to hell. The best you can do to change the language, is to be an example of what you want, and hope to flying spaghetti monster, that it catches on.
TLDR: Go with the flow or don’t go at all.
Reddit: Awful and proud of it.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Men’s Rights subreddit, someone has once again posted a link to the “The Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics,” because god forbid anyone ever say anything “shaming” about MRAs for being the shitty people they are.
Ooooh, boy, do I have citations on that one.
Not proving his point, of course. His point is stupid. But I can point you to some absolutely heart-wrenching stuff on people being forced out of movements they love by rampant racism and misogyny.
Yeah. Anybody who can look in there and feel that the fault lies on those who have endured harrassment and marginalization….?
Asshole.
Bring it on!!!
Going along with your example, the problem surrounding female objectification in games isn’t that female characters are garbed in lingerie and male characters are sporting leather man-thongs during or in preparation for “business time, it’s that outside of “business time”, when female and male characters are engaged in same or similar activities far removed from “business time”, female characters continue to be decked out in lingerie while the male characters have abandoned their leather man-thongs and are suited in clothing more appropriate to the task at hand.
I may wear a teddy, fishnet stockings and stiletto boots/shoes when engaging in “business time” with a partner who is clad in a leather man-thong, but if we are engaged in a different activity…. oh, say, on the roof of my house cleaning the gutters…. I abandon my “business time” apparel for something a little more appropriate for the job, and so does he. Now, if those activities were depicted in a video game, I would be cleaning the gutters dressed in my “business time” outfit, while my partner would be dressed in trousers and shirt. Male characters are equipped for a multitude of varying tasks, as males are uniquely capable of performing a variety of things, but female characters are equipped for “business time” only, as that is females’ sole purpose and capability (outside of making sammiches, of course).
I guess a “shorter Pam” would be:
Male characters in games, much like males IRL, are multi-dimensional, whereas female characters in games, much like females IRL, are (or ought to be) one-dimensional.
I love it when the trolls say something that is plainly and obviously true, but think that because they said it sarcastically it makes it not true.
Yes, Phil, calling someone ignorant or an asshole is substantially different than threatening to rape them. This is not a difficult concept to grasp.
And if you’re wondering why we think you’re ignorant, it’s because you do things like assert that RPGs feature an overrepresentation of female characters with absolutely no evidence to back it up and then ignore when people point out how incredibly and verifiably wrong you are. We call you ignorant because you repeatedly demonstrate a shocking ignorance of the very issues you’re talking about.
Perhaps he should be employed as Todd Akins’ speech writer.
Tangeant Attack! Dun dun duuuuun.
Harvest Moon keeps coming up and it makes me want to play it (I did play some once and it was teh funz), though I don’t have a DS or any idea which one out of the series is the best. :O
Also, tackling random idiots on the internet is so much easier than confronting your friends about stuff. I’m trying to get my point across to my friend at the minute… trying to persuade him that using offensive language/jokes = bad, even if people don’t actually believe the stuff they say.
Well, not so much persuading, as he gets that concept, But he’s stuck in the “middle/indifference” position of “equality = good, offending people = bad, free speech = good, and I want to say stuff and not have people get angry at me, and change = hard”.
Because i’m massively useless and crap, I basically just threw some links to blog posts explaining things at him and ran away. I’m talking (typing) to him now and trying to go over some points and stuff, but i’m beyond rubbish at talking to people. 🙁
There were a few good points. But I’m tired and I probably won’t come back to this thread. It was good talking to you guys.
That’s what you did in Patriactionary too. Waltzed out with your arguments abandoned.
FFX-2 is FFV with one less dude. In FFV, when you change job classes, your sprite changes clothes. CAlling a Job class a dress sphere does not make it stop being a job class.
FFX-2 is actually one of square’s better final fantasies for this, frankly; the women are all pro-active rather than passively waiting to react to the villain, the costumes average out around average (Although I’ll certainly grant that the three default classes aren’t great)
‘censoring bloggers’ != ‘kicking bloggers off their network’. Censorship can only be done by the government. It’s in the damn definition. Fucking pathetic, if this is what you are trying.
And no, the atheism movement is not ‘imploding’ due to feminism. In all probability, it will grow stronger as it stops being so damn focused on Able, Neurotypical Honky mcstraighterson III. Everyone else got the rest pretty well, seems like.
[quote]Citation needed. Because this is news to me. What I see is a lot of people all complainy ass and offended that Skepchick called them out for being douchecanoes and assholes; and the majority saying, “we’re cool with that.”[/quote]
There’s definitely a non-zero number of assholes who want feminist atheists to, you know, stop being feminist.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag/2012/08/how-i-unwittingly-infiltrated-the-boys-club-why-its-time-for-a-new-wave-of-atheism/
But I’m not buying that atheism is under threat of dying due to DEEP RIFTS.
The amount of idiocy in these comments is astounding!
In all honesty, I get pissy about female gamers. Every gamer has to deal with crap online, just in a different context. Gamers will target you based on the prominent groups you belong to. Homosexual, then you will be targeted for that. Fat, that. Asian, that. Black, that. Nerd, that. Girls, that. Hell, I have even been targeted for being a gamer online.
I have played with many female characters online, and I rarely hear anyone target them. Yes there are an odd few, but far less than gamers that target other male gamers. If anything, females have got to be the group least targeted.
I have never attacked someone online, not just females, but anybody. However, I fully understand why people would. The gaming community is a “competitive” area. Competitive areas involve negativity when losing, most of the time in mockery or for venting. I understand this, which is why I tend to let it fly by. If I am targeted, I retaliate, as I am venting back. But nine times out of ten after we vent, and these people can be pretty harsh to me, we start getting along. We play a few custom games, say “good game” at the end, and be on our separate ways.
Most, and I say most because not all female gamers have this “You insult ‘me!?’ a female!? This community must be sexist”, can understand this. They can understand that areas involving competition are not going to be friendly, not all the time, anyway. But most gamers don’t even do this, so I don’t know why women act as if this is an epidemic. There is also a mute button. If you do not like what someone is saying, you mute them and chat with the remaining people not pestering you, like what every other game belonging to a certain group has to do.
It seems most female gamers do not want to do this, though. They want the competitive area to be rainbows and flowers followed with cuddles at the end of a game. Ok, I might be mocking there, but that’s how this feels. It reminds me of how feminists have attacked sports in schools because it is “too violent”. Something they are not even the majority of equally matching in quality in, they changed it and the majority of people that are involved and like it have to suffer from it, all because they, the minority, didn’t like it.
It is getting beyond a joke, and it is one of the reasons why I may consider the idea “just don’t let women on games”, and it irritates even myself that I come to that conclusion, but I honestly see no other option other than a way to separate the gaming community from males and females so you can only play with one group. It annoys me that males deal with this behaviour willingly and understand why it happens, and they enjoy the fact they can freely vent in gaming, but the second female gamers come in, it all has to change because they can’t handle the gaming community.
These female gamers need to realize that simply because they are now involved does not make it all about them. Everyone gets harassed, and it is mainly due to the competitive environment and venting. It should not change just because they cannot handle it what everyone else can and does have to deal with. If you cannot handle what makes the gaming community, and you want something that does not involve “competitive” behaviour, then what are you doing in a competitive environment? Doesn’t make so much sense, does it? Kind of reminds me of the buzzkill school teacher that bans dodge ball because they don’t think it is appropriate, when the class enjoys that game the most.
Women need to stop thinking with this “me, me, me” attitude. You are not the group of gamers mostly attacked, if anything, you are not even in the top three, you are harassed less than male gamers. So you need to stop acting as if simply being treated like every other gamer means that you are the only group targeted.
Here are a list of things I have had to deal with online:
– “You fucking faggot. I bet you like it up the ass, you cunt”.
– “I’m going to fuck you up the ass, you fucking faggot bitch.
– “I’m going to burn you alive you motherfucker”.
– “I’m going to find you and fucking stab you to death”.
– “I’m going to murder your family”.
Do I make a big deal about it? No, because I understand they are venting or bitching. Do I expect it to change for “me”? No.
Male gamers get just as much of these “threats”, and many times worse than what females get. Yet, women complain more than these men when told to go to the kitchen? This is why males have a problem with female gamers. You overreact to things that everyone else can deal with, and you expect everything to change for “you”, as if “you” are the only ones being attacked”.
_____________________________________________________
At this point, it is pretty clear that you are a feminist. I am not MRA, as I have not explored the group much, but I am against feminist and support the things men have to deal with nowadays. I used to be a feminist until I reached the age I started questioning everything.
You mock and insult people that are against “anti-male shaming”, and yet you are probably the same type of woman that would say the exact same about anti-woman shaming. If anything, this is exactly what you have done here. So how can you sit there and mock these people for the thing you have just done for your own side? That’s the type of reasoning that made me disband from feminism.
You claim these MRA are shitty people, but how many MRA have broken the law or human rights for their own agenda? I have seen feminists do this often to MRA or men trying to figure out more about the things they face in modern society.
For example. When MRA put up posters against male violence. It said “you wouldn’t hate blacks, would you? A decent person wouldn’t. You wouldn’t hate homosexuals, would you? A decent person wouldn’t. You wouldn’t hate women, would you? A decent person wouldn’t. You wouldn’t hate men, would you?”….Feminist swarmed the area where these posters were put up and started putting them down under the reason “it is hatred against women”….The posters that included “hatred against women is wrong”, was considered female hate. It was put on private property, which the person stated, and they continued. Some even said “You are not allowing us to have free speech by not allowing us to not let you have free speech”. Then the cops arrived, and they started to leave. So they knew they were breaking the law.
Then when there was a speech on males and what they face in today’s world was up, feminists swarmed the area and held the doors shut, not allowing people to view the speech, attacking mens free speech. They cussed and insulted anyone that was going to attend this speech, so much that the law, once again, had to get involved. When the law forced the people holding the doors shut back, these feminists shouted “this is what mens rights look like”, as if to say by not allowing them to take away human rights of men, it shows the negatives of mens rights…Sensible, right? Fortunately, a voice for men named and shamed these people that took away human rights and put them in the public online. Now anyone searching them up can see what they have done, and so future employers will know not to hire such hate filled people.
Quite frankly, I think as a feminist, you are trying to make victims were there are none just to make it seem like females suffer such a hard life.
Rant over.
As a girl, I find it very annoying when guys change their behaviours just because a girl joined their server on Battle Field. I want them to shoot at me and say they’re going to bang my mother, it’s all part of the fun! Seriously “gamer girls,” suck it up or stop playing!
Gah, it’s sad when skimming the last page of the thread you find a member of the grand exodus looking reasonable.
And whatever happened to ShadeTheDruid? Ze introduced me to the SCP foundation and deserves a major thank you for that!
Can’t be bothered to read all of Spiked Yum’s teal deer, but one bit did jump out at me as I scrolled past. Why does he think a woman wrote this? I’ve lived on several different continents and I’ve yet to meet a woman named David.
Its amazing that it took that dude like 50 paragraphs just to say “I don’t have the slightest idea what it is like to be a woman in a male dominated area, let me explain in detail”.
TIL that hetero, thin, white, and male are not “prominent groups.” Unless — do a lot of online gamers like to shout “ha, take that, fucking straighty! What’s it like being a fucking thin man?”
I normally don’t try or even want to speak for this blog’s community, but I’m very comfortable in saying that no one here cares at all about your opinions on women gamers. There are plenty of places where uninteresting, immature adolescent boys complain about this shit at length. Try Reddit.
You see feminists “break the law or human rights”? JFC. For shits and giggles, define “human rights” in this context. Keep it brief and on point. Or GTFO, that works too.
Hey, it’s a guy who totally in no way whatsoever is a MRA but knows all about AVfM and feels a pressing need to badger us endlessly for saying criticizing that
illustrious human rights organizationsadass website.Pro tip: Only MRAs and it’s critics know about the obscure website known as A Voice For Men. We know you are a MRA and denying it in a fanciful attempt to pretend you are a unbiased observer is very, very sad spectacle. The vast majority of MRA trolls who pop up here make the same, very unbelievable claim about not being a MRA. Be honest and have the courage of your convictions, as misguided as they are. Have some dignity.
Not having sex with a man who’s been following you around hoping you’ll notice what a nice guy he is and offer him a pity fuck is a human rights abuse.
(Incels are still working on making it illegal, stay tuned.)
I don’t see how things are ever going to change. Conditions are horrible, but it seems like video games are the sort of space that will inevitably attract some bitter, hostile assholes with poor social skills to take roost. That’s all you need to poison the well as far as interaction goes. Even if most gamers are decent people, the ones who want to act like garbage are going to ruin it. Not to mention that others who wouldn’t act that way will be taken in. I think the only way for multiplayer to be civil is to just play with people you know.
“Teenage Boys: ‘World won’t end if video games have female protagonists’ shock!!!!”
Read all about it:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/10/teenage-boys-sexist-video-games
Hah! I came here to see who’d ninja’d me on mentioning this.
Congratulations Alan. You’re the winner.
Yey!
OK, first I’d like thank my mum and dad…..
This presupposes that decent people have to stand aside and let the horrible people do whatever they want.
And of course the comments are full of MRAs whining about the headline being sexist against boys. A survey counters the MRA/gamergate argument that games have to objectify women because the market demands it and so they have no recourse but to derail. Typical.
Although one of them was just assuming that the boys were lying even though that sample size was big enough and the results significant enough for inevitable percentage of respondents who lie to be swallowed up.
Oh, MRA logic. They love science. Until it says something they don’t like.