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.
@whataboutthemoonz: If clairedammit did, in fact, find the right video, I’d have to agree with you.
It was trying to be funny, but ended up falling flat. The threats came across more on the side of ridiculous and the delivery of the lines lent more weight to that.
I kinda like the idea, though: the reversal of roles. If it were done as a serious piece (maybe longer, showing the continuation of the threats over time), it could actually be a PSA against the things it is mocking. As such, the male gamer winds up looking pathetic…taken that way, it actually trivializes the threats that female gamers deal with.
Is that your excuse for the horrid shit you write, Ruby?
Polliwog, that was fabulous. I salute you.
I just want to point out that when there is a male character that’s sexualized, like say Vaan from Final Fantasy XII, these same male gamers that dismiss women’s complaints totally flip their shit and call these characters “wimps” and “f*gg*ts” and complain about how their outfits are ridiculous and all other kinds of shit. So it’s obvious that they’re not nearly as thick-skinned as they claim when the tables are turned.
@Polliwog, that was a work of art. Step-by-step takedown of every point, beautifully.
I salute you in song:
Myoo-
Even “better”, when JRPGs as a genre included those characters, not only did men freak the fuck out, but they also turned on the genre entirely and declared it “not real video gaming” and everyone who played those games “not real gamers”. Coincidentally, this also occurs to every genre when female fans of a genre become visibly equal to or greater than the male ones.
Cause if women gamers exist, then that genre of video gaming must not have been teh hardcorez unlike X genre where women are still harassed out of participating as visibly.
@Cerberus
True, I think that may be a large contributor to the whole “casual gaming” thing. “All these women nowadays all play puzzle games and simulations and all that girlie casual crap. Not like us manly men, we played Tetris and Pacman and Columns and Sim City and all those MANLY games”.
There are also male characters like Mario, Luigi, Link, etc. from some of the classic games that aren’t hypersexualized and super muscular. It’s hard to think of female game characters that would be an equivalent to Mario. The closest I can think of is Samus Aran, but even under her special suit, she’s wearing a bikini.
So to compare sexualized male characters to sexualized female characters is a false equivalence. Where are the male versions of Rumble Roses, Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball, or any of the other games that are more like Playboy than a video game?
Looking back over Phil’s comments, I’m reminded of an incident a number of years ago when I was killing time between classes at a video arcade. A boy of about 8-9 years old was having a fit/tantrum/future MRA rage about too many “girls” being in there and how he didn’t want them there. An older boy (15-16) was trying to shut him up, get him out of there, or just trying to sink into the ground. The younger boy was really upset though, and very resentful of the young women who were also killing time in the arcade. An early example of “male space” invaded by females, whom this kid apparently thought had no right to be here. Fast-forward to now, and it seems nothing has changed in the gaming world. Women are still there, and there are some (rather immature) men who are still pitching fits over it.
No one has EVER shamed me for *being* a male.
I think Reddit here is confusing “male” for “bigot,” a creature that deserves about all the shame it can muster.
@thebionicmommy: Hey, be fair, not all depictions of Samus have her in a bikini under the armour.
Sometimes it’s a skintight bodysuit.
This is obviously completely different. >_>
That is, in fact, the right video.
I, in good faith, hoped the creators had enough sense to be self-aware and that the overall point was “saying shit like this is ridiculous, and not at all related to gaming, knock it the fuck off”, although I understand how it could be taken in a variety of less-good ways.
Basically, a lot of the people on that post seem to only care about harassment when it comes to *them.* Apparently, being called a “creep” is “anti-male shaming language,” but as soon women are targeted for their gender, they’re just being “overly-sensitive.”
Fortunately, as a game designer, I rarely experience harassment in the gaming industry. I think that a lot of gamers and game developers are progressive and open-minded. Some, however, need to learn to walk in someone else’s damn shoes.
So, because people used to be abusive racist assholes and used this to enslave other people, we should totally allow it to happen today?
And because we used to think that bloodletting was the BEST WAY to cure all disease, we should throw out modern medicine?
Because we never used to use chemical birth control methods when we first became Homo Sapiens, we should never use it now, right?
And god forbid we use any cooking methods that don’t involve eating the steaming flesh of a just-killed animal or throwing it on a fire until it’s burned all to hell.
Just because something has been a certain way in the past does not make that way the best way to do it. The whole “abusive gamer asshatery online” thing has never made sense to me as being a main tenant of gaming (and this is coming from someone who has a gaming blog and has many gamer friends of all backgrounds who find abusive gamer behavior unpleasant and shitty as well).
When I was a kid, we would all gather around the old Gray Block computer and play Encarta Quest which was on Encarta 95 and Oregon Trail fever swept the school, causing the computer lab to be filled each recess.
Was it because both of these games were the bestest games in the universe? Nope. There are some “old games” that stand up after the test of time (Tetris, the Simpsons brawler arcade game, Mario, etc), but one of the main reasons we like a lot of new games even more as many “old classics” fall by the wayside is because they have more options and depth than ever before.
So why should we keep around abusive behavior and make excuses for it when the only people being served by normalizing abusive gamer behavior are the abusers?
Abusive behavior needs to be heavily discouraged, in all media. We’re playing games to have fun, not to be subject to every racial, bigoted, obscene word in the book. Whatever happened to “dang, nice shot” to your opponent when he shoots you midair, and the like?
Rage generation is swinging in full force…and I happen to live with one. It’s highly disturbing that young adults/pr to pre-teens talk and act like how they do online anywhere, and then always expect to never be talked to that way. Well how about you don’t act that way and maybe it’ll trickle down eventually to get back to a respectful generation?
…it’d be like somebody stealing from an elderly person with dementia and all of us going “oh it’s ok, that is just what everybody else is doing, therefore it must be right”
I think I’ll make a game where everyone is a shapeless, androgynous, grey blob, and the goal is to get the antagonists to herd with the rest of the shapeless, grey blobs. The grey blobs sort of amble about saying tolerance over and over whenever there are no antagonists present. The antagonists will of course be straight, white men. The overlord superbad antagonists will be Christian as well.
Whenever the herd encounters straight, white men saying anything that doesn’t conform to marxist critical theory, the herd moves in. Some of the greys hurl marshmellows containing hate speech laws at the insurgents. Some of the greys pray to the State for guidance while the rest of the greys chant tolerance, over and over again until the evil straight, white man becomes a shapeless, androgynous, grey blob as well.
When confronted with a super evil, straight, white, Christian man. The grey blobs turn into rainbow lions while the other grey blobs surround him. The rainbow lions spew butterflies from their mouths, which never cease to shut for long anyways. The evil terrorist man eventually disappears into a mist of flowers and unicorns. The game is won when the whole world is filled with shapeless, androgynous, grey blobs worshipping the state.
Mr Slave, will your game have any disembodied clasped hands that are chained? Kinkaaayyy
NWO thats one whacked out dream or trip you had there.
I like that the straight white chrisitan men are portrayed as human while everyone else is gray blobs that will force the poor men to become blobs too. XD
I did not know that NWO took acid. The superdogs thing makes so much more sense now.
I hate to say it, but NWO just made my morning.
So how exactly are people harassing other gamers (in good fun) about being fat, short or Asian if only attention whore women are the ones ‘revealing’ their personal details (aka that they are not male. The horror, the horror).
The is something very off about how often women, even outside of gaming, are accused of wanting attention. The default is not being invisible until you need a menu or a memo taken, people.
Here’s an idea: act however you want when you are playing with people you know, who know you, and there is an established understanding of what’s expected/accepted within that social circle. But when you’re playing with people you don’t know, who don’t know you… well, consider that how you act is going to leave an immediate — and often lasting — impression of you that could cause those people never to want to play with you again. So, if you are interested in establishing yourself (and your clan or guild in games where these social structures exist) as mature, intelligent, and welcoming, act accordingly. If you have no desire to recruit other mature, intelligent players… continue to act like dumbass kids on the playground, spouting rude, racist, sexist bullshit, and don’t be surprised when those mature, intelligent players will have nothing to do with your shit.
@bespectacledape – you nailed it.
Aw, thanks to everyone who said nice things about my troll-whacking. 🙂
In other news, this is the only sensible response to Owly’s latest post:
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/264/585/126.jpg