You'll never guess what misogynistic gamebros did to these two women in gaming! (HINT: Drove them out.)

@Hyatt

Uh, she said: “It pisses me off that they shit in a sandbox they did nothing to build or create or maintain”, which is stating that none of us bought any video games. Or bought video game mags or talked about video games or god beware… played them.

Riiight.

Not that that that relevant here as these women are being attacked because they were making, playing, buying and writing about games.

Must be all that “thonking”.

OMG, I didn’t notice that till now. That’s hilarious! And yeah, THONKING. This is what they do in lieu of THINKING. “Thonk” is the sound a mostly empty head makes when hitting the wall, is it not?

Men cheat all the time, but no one says, “Well, he can’t design games, because he cheated on his wife!” No, they don’t give a flying flergle, because it’s completely irrelevant.

But if a woman does it, it’s all, “ETHICS! She deserves to be crippled for life!”

Hammer, nail, head. The “ethics” of the misodgey stochastic terrorist are simple:

1. Do as I say, not as I do.

3. Should that happen, I will deny all wrongdoing and pretend I couldn’t have known that someone else would take my shit seriously.

Yes, it’s hugely hypocritical. And double-standardy as fuck.

And re: real-world violence as it ties into gaming, the US military is actively invested in the shooter-games industry, particularly combat simulation games. They’ve actually used them to lure teens and pre-teens into considering military careers already. Given that drone wars are a growing and very profitable niche in the military-industrial complex, and the military’s constant demand for warm young bodies to fill recruitment quotas, of course they’re going to get involved. And they’re going to present actual, deadly drone warfare as a stepped-up, super-duper-double-looper exciting version of a shooter game, too.

One of the things about the Collateral Murder video (trigger warning: graphic violence) that struck me was how much the helicopter gunship pilots behaved like kids playing a game. They could see that they were killing innocent Iraqi journalists and farmers and parents with kids in the van, and they just kept shooting anyway. That’s the sort of thing I’d expect to see from a gun-happy gamebro who also harasses women online, insults other gamers, and generally poisons all the fun.

So yes, in a big way, SOME games do promote real-life violence. But it’s not convenience-store shootings in “bad” neighborhoods, or stabbings, or fistfights, that we should worry the most about. It’s WARS. Mass murder with state sanction. Crimes against humanity. Things you’d never expect to find associated with “just a game”.

@ catfrom outerspace – I can’t answer the question, but the response is the same as the resopnse to Rebecca Watson’s “Guys, don’t do that” .. it’s as if their little universes frikkin imploded for some reason. I could never understand that one, and I don’t understand this. I don’t want to get into the weeds of personal attacks or pseudo-therapy or anything like that, but the only thing that even occurs to me that could prompt this level of vitriol is that there are a lot of dudebros out there with unresolved emotional problems and they need to have their internetz privileges removed until they get some damn good therapy. We all have problems, dudebros. Get over yourselves, get some help with your self-esteem issues, and join the frikkin human race…..

I guess congratulations to the gamebros are in order; now even more people will come to automatically assume that the default setting for a guy gamer is “abusive piece of shit”. Yay, victory?

Not that they’ve won anything new from me, since I’ve been making that assumption for a couple of decades now. Totally unfair and unkind to gaming guys who aren’t garbage, of course, but I’m numb after years of being shit on, and I don’t give a fuck anymore. I can totally understand why these journalists want nothing more to do with it. The assholes just trumpet way too loudly. And constantly.

Oops! I thought that would just be link. Sorry!

Seconding what Cassandrakitty said. Whatever backlash men might stand to face by speaking out against harassment, it’s not remotely to the same degree the women themselves are getting for just being women. And for those women facing those threats and harassment and decide to get away from it, it’s not remotely the same as men not speaking up. Those women are leaving for their own safety. Men who aren’t harassers but choose not to speak up against those who are are cowards.

Plus, just FYI, when you phrase things as “I find it ironic that X, when there’s also Y” it strongly implies that you don’t really agree with X. I’m hoping that was just poor phrasing and not an attempt to suggest that those women are wrong for leaving an environment in which they’re enduring daily rape and death threats.

@cassandrakitty

There has to be a way to get the guys who’re making direct threats, right? They should at the very least be banned from any/all relevant conventions.

I concur. So far the only people who have faced any consequences are the women who have spoken out against this kind of BS.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to turn the internet hate machine’s tools back on them? Create a site listing all of the vomit spewed out by these cretins next to a picture of them and their contact details, ddos attacks on their favourite misogynist hangouts, doxing them all. Think of the media shitstorm that would create.
There’s a part of me, the bulk of me actually, that thinks that would be wrong and stooping to their level. But there’s another part of me that says “fuck it, let’s mess their shit up.” I really want to see their behaviour follow them for the rest of their miserable little lives.

I think the very fact that the women are leaving, saying so, and saying that it’s because of harassment means that they’re not complicit by being silent, because they aren’t silent. They’re explicitly pointing out that there’s a problem, and that it’s so much of a problem that it’s limiting them.

they pretend that the label “gamer” wasn’t already associated with screaming at people for no good reason.

You screw up in an online game and WHAM, EVERY SLUR ON EARTH gets thrown at you.

But god forbid anyone complain about it happening

If it was just a lack of support for women who’re being harassed in comment threads that would still be bad, but what’s alarming is that the hostility to women seems to show up everywhere that gamers congregate, including in meatspace.

Is there a way to throw people out of online gaming communities if they behave badly, like eject them from your WOW guild? That might be a start. Basically what Breakfast Man said in the last thread – the best way for a community to control people like that is via social ostracism.