So the #GamerGaters are mad about a new study that suggests that some of the most dickishly misogynistic male gamers are quite literally losers. That is, men playing video games like Halo and Call of Duty online tend to lash out at women players when they’re doing their worst.
Looking at the behavior of a number of men and women over the course of 163 games of Halo 3, researchers Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff from the University of New South Wales and Miami University found that
lower-skilled players were more hostile towards a female-voiced teammate, especially when performing poorly. In contrast, lower-skilled players behaved submissively towards a male-voiced player in the identical scenario. This difference in gender-directed behaviour became more extreme with poorer focal-player performance.
In other words, the more of a video game loser they were, the more of a misogynistic loser they became.
We suggest that low-status males increase female-directed hostility to minimize the loss of status as a consequence of hierarchical reconfiguration resulting from the entrance of a woman into the competitive arena.
In other words, they hate losing … to a girl.
The researchers argue that the entrance of larger numbers of women into the dude-heavy world of video games is especially threatening to “[l]ow-status and low-performing males,” who
have the most to lose as a consequence of the hierarchical reconfiguration due to the entry of a competitive woman. As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.
If this all sounds to you like a plausible explanation for a lot of the anger driving #GamerGaters, you’re not the only one to see the connection.
A recent article on the study on Yahoo News suggests that,
[a]s gaming has traditionally been a male-dominated pastime, these findings could go some way to explain 2014′s Gamergate furore. Several high profile female game developers were targeted with a torrent of misogynistic abuse, including rape and death threats, coordinated by factions of male gamers using sites like 4Chan and Reddit.
And this is what has the #GamerGaters on Reddit’s KotakuInAction subreddit pig-biting mad. In a thread complaining about the Yahoo News piece, the regulars show just what losers they really are by lashing out at … women.
Evidently forgetting that the study in question was conducted by two men, a Redditor called Katastic_Voyage won more than 130 upvotes with a lovely rant declaring that
There’s a huge freaking difference between shit talking, and bullying.
But most of these articles and “papers” are written by women, who live in a woman’s world, and don’t understand the first thing about what it’s really like to be a man. The others are by men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it–they were likely forced to grow up in a woman dominated, catty, passive-aggressive world.
Ok, my bad. The researchers might appear to be men, but are probably “men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it.”
And somehow this all has something to do with metal music:
Woman call all men “dumb” because that’s what they call anything they don’t understand. It’d be like someone who likes classical music calling metal dumb. Even if they’re actually related. Even though there’s plenty of beauty and complexity in metal… they don’t ever dive into it so they deride and dismiss it.
It IS real music, mom! (Sound of bedroom door slamming, followed by the muffled intro to “Enter Sandman.”)
So they take things like:
The need to compete? They think it’s violence.
The need to shit talk? They think it’s bullying.
The fact that men can look at other women and not cheat? It blows their minds that men can actually feel pleasure just seeing a woman of beauty… and that’s it.
Uh, I thought we were talking about video games. Did some mean lady just break up with you?
A fellow called Zakamaru, replying to Katastic_Voyage, decided to show how not mad he was about women invading “male spaces” by getting mad about women invading “male spaces.”
It’s what happens when a bunch of women get into male spaces and some fail to understand it.
Gaming has always been competitive. I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I was called various names and derogatory remarks, but it doesn’t fucking matter. You get insulted all the time, and it takes a special type of person to actually take offense to that. …
It’s not that we hate women. With gaming being a predominantly male hobby, it’s going to have elements of masculinity, competitiveness, and testosterone floating about. When people shit talk, they will use any sort of “weakness” that you have and attack it. If you’re unskilled, you’re a noob/scrub. If you’re an obvious underaged child, you get called a kid. If someone needs a quick all-purpose insult, you’re now a faggot.
When some women see this, they immediately think that it needs to change to fit their worldview. To them, these insults are simply unacceptable, and are “x-phobic” or whatever tumblr buzzword they feel like using today. Never mind the fact that gaming was born from a bunch of socially awkward men who carved out their own space with their own culture and lingo. No, now you have to cater to ME, because I’m a GIRL.
Boy, you guys really put those dumb lady researchers (who aren’t ladies, but who maybe sort of really are) in their place.
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Please read the newly revised COMMENTS POLICY before commenting.
If we’re doing steam names I use an account called gigaakumu with the display name Sephira jo. My own account Sephirajo is merged with my hubbies, so yes. :3 Anyone who has steam feel free to add me.
Friend invites sent to Sephira jo and Paradoxical Intention.
The server I’m currently hosting is a big modded server, which might be difficult for computers to run… I think if there’s a more permenant server set up, it might be better to do something more vanilla-y to make it more accessable.
In any case, if you want in, easiest way to do it is to add me on steam (“kirbywarp,” with the cobra icon), and I can tell you the server ip and whitelist you.
Or just get in touch with someone already on the server, and they’ll give me the whitelist information. Either way.
Then again, maybe the computer requirements on servers are just the rendering, since the calculations are done server side. Who knows, haven’t done a whole lot of server hosting before. No harm in trying if you want in!
@katz:
I had Sim Ant for the Amiga, loved it. Power monger was a good one around then too.
@Kirby:
If I had the time I’d like that, a Minecraft server would be cool. Must focus on getting my work done though!
So sorry all. Had to go do real life for a day and see that several people were talking to me. So, sorry for the (extreme) teal, but I want to answer, and I totally understand if people deer. 🙂
@Pandapool
I’d understand if you were trying to forget the garden part on purpose. I didn’t mind it, at first, but it got boring pretty fast. Just another daily thing that made WoW endgame feel more like a “job” than fun to me.
The first WoW toon I ever made (I think it was in beta) was undead, so I remember that starter zone well! Definitely one of the best things Cata did was make leveling through vanilla a whole lot less confusing. I still remember the first time through vanilla, where here I am in STV and I’ve got a bunch of really, really green quests in the north, and nothing but really, really red quests in the south, and I don’t have any idea where to go, and I won’t get a mount until 40, so it’s going to take 100 years to go check out a bunch of other zones and try to figure out where there is something level appropriate. After that toon, I discovered Jame’s leveling guides, though. Those were masterpieces.
@Wtfcakes
That’s funny. I think if I had to give up my consoles or my microwave now, I’d definitely opt for keeping the consoles. And wow, I didn’t know there were still any black and white TVs still around in the 80s! I do remember, when I was very little, watching shows on a 13″ black and white. No wonder people used to worry so much that TV would make you go blind.
@Robert
Despite begin a long time video and other “geeky” games gamer, cribbage is still one of my all-time favorite games!
And Civ was my true gateway game. I’d wanted an Atari, and I’d played Pong and stuff, but Civ was the video game that made me a true believer. I had Sim City at the same time, but I never got it. I even downloaded it from gog.com or Origins recently to see if I’d get it now that I’m a much more experienced gamer, and no—still don’t get it.
But even though I never turned war off in Civ, I’d try to avoid it at all costs, at least, sometimes until the end of the game when I was waiting for my cities to finish my space ship parts and needed a distraction in the meantime. In the early game, I’d often just restart if another civilization attacked me.
To go slightly on topic for a second, it made me mostly happy that Civ had a couple of civilizations with women rulers. I kind of wished for more, but considering history, I thought it was kind of cool that Sid Meier made the effort to use a couple of famous historical women. Another game I played sometime in the 90s was Might and Magic VI. You made four characters at the beginning of the game and character creation provided 10 faces and voices to choose from—six men and four women. So yeah, I could never figure out why they couldn’t have gone one better and made five and five, but it was possible to make an all-woman party, at least, if I wanted to. And X-Com gave me quite a few women soldiers, if not, usually as many as it gave me men. And yeah, then there was Doom (which is pretty much the first, last, and only FPS I put much time into (although I think I played a little bit of a Halo campaign), and the game that taught me this important lesson: create more than one save!).
But all of this, again, just gets me confused about the “gaming has always been a boys’ club” thing. There wasn’t necessarily anything resembling “equality” in those early games, but it seemed pretty clear to me at the time that a lot of game devs were trying for inclusiveness, at least in a sometimes half-assed way. And I think I was always really sensitive to the issue.
@Catalpa
I actually really agree with you, here. One of the reasons I quit Assassin’s Creed III halfway through (besides not being very enamored with the story or character) was that I hated the new controls. Why did they change them? Whyyyy? I had gotten pretty good at the old ones and the new ones weren’t fun for me.
But then, maybe this makes me a lame or casual gamer, but I really don’t like games that are “too hard.” I know “too easy” is something I hear other gamers complain about. And I mean, okay, on my third play through of the Mass Effect series, I finally upped the difficulty to “normal,” but even though it was still pretty easy, I never upped it again on any subsequent playthroughs. I’ll spend hours reloading conversations and playing through the various conversation trees, but when it comes to combat, I really just want to go in, easily kick some ass, say “aw yeah, femShep is awesome!” and go on with the story. Combat tactics and spending hours on deploying my team, and using their abilities at the right time, etc., just isn’t all that fun for me most of the time (except that I loved X-Com). Maybe I like it in TBS, only.
I usually differ with other gamers on “open world” stuff, too. Despite liking the basic framework of Elder Scrolls games, and starting Morrowind about 20 times, I’ve never finished one. It’s just too much, and I can never, ever, feel like a completionist in them. My favorite Final Fantasy game? XIII. And I like it for pretty much all the reasons other people hated it. Go ahead, give me a hallway where I don’t need to spend hours looking around in order to feel like I haven’t missed something, and keep delivering cut scenes and story, and I’m usually a happy camper. Plus, make me play all the toons and not just keep focusing on my favorites, because I like that. It’s part of why I adore the loyalty and companion missions in Mass Effect and Dragon Age 2. I did finish DA:I twice, but it was disappointing to me on a lot of levels (in terms of story and character) and just too fucking big. My second playthrough, I think there were three or four zones that I never even bothered to go to at all. I’d like to play through it once more, just to romance Sera, who was the first one I really wanted to romance since I tend to want to go for lesbian romances, but I felt my first toon was too goody-goody for Sera, and my second toon was created entirely to romance Solas after seeing how the whole story played out, but no way am I wanting to put another 120 hours into the game (so much of which feels like almost pointless side crap), just to see how a Sera romance plays out.
I do like more “finite” and yet “open” world stuff. Talk about problematic content, but I really enjoyed playing Saints’ Row 2, 3, and 4 (couldn’t make it through 1), despite it all. Anyway, not to drag on, but even though I’m a total minority, I think I have a problem with ethics in games journalism. I’ve noticed that they really tend to review games based on preferences that I don’t fucking share, and I’d really like them to stop it and cater to my taste, instead. Talk about unethical. /sarcasm
@Sunny
My kids are old enough to remember VCRs, but I remember renting them, too, and they probably wouldn’t get that. Anyway, I too, am often amazed at how much the world has changed in my lifetime. But I suppose we’re not unique in that. My grandma used to talk about growing up without a phone or a TV, or even, when she was little, electricity. I’d try to imagine it, but it was hard and still is.
I went to an amusement park with my family last weekend, and I said I was going to leave my cell phone home because I didn’t want to deal with carrying it around and going on rides, and I didn’t want to leave it in the hot car. And my kids were like, “but what if we get separated.” I said, look, when I was little, we’d set a designated “meeting place” where everyone would plan to go if we got lost, so that’s what we’ll do. I was thinking “see, there’s an old-school way to do things.” I think they were thinking, “that’s so dumb; it would be a whole lot easier if you just took your phone, Mom.”
@Jenora
I hate computer cribbage, pretty much because the game is a snooze-o-rama for me without counting (even though I typically avoid muggins games—too competitive), but I have to remember that war cribbage variant. I’ll play standard three- and four-player cribbage, but it’s definitely not as satisfying as two-player.
Anyway, apologies again, for this horrible wall of text. And I won’t think anyone is mean if you didn’t make it this far.
Im just wondering here, but why can’t men have their own space with out women? If women have their own space, why is that that men are not allowed and if they do then they are misogynistic and have to include women to continue business. Always though it was odd.
Okay, question, are you guys doing the Minecraft thing of Steam because I don’t have it on Steam and I don’t even know if it’s on Steam or is this Relms stuff because I haven’t been on a Minecraft server since waaay before Relms.
Also I’ve had the game since…2011, I think? So do I give you guys the name I originally registered under for the name I changed it to when that was patched in?
Lastly, I have no idea how much ping I’ll be getting since the computer I have Minecraft on only gets wifi and the last server I was on gave me a LOT of ping, which someone suggested way because I didn’t have my router connected to my computer or something which I wouldn’t know would be true since we were sharing internet with my neighbor then so IDK.
@Belladonna993
Dailies suck. :/
But my first toon and main is my lovely Forsaken warlock Gristofer. I love him. He used to be a priest when he was alive but got suckered into Kel’Thuzad’s cult and I love him. I wish I was better at RPing.
I’m also a big fan of cribbage.
I think the Minecraft-Steam thing was a way of enabling PMs so Kirby didn’t have to share their IP in public. (I’m Girgrabirgle on Steam, by the way).
@Belladonna993:
I generally played the horned ones. Begin with a ‘d’. Apparently it’s been a long time, I can’t even remember that. I liked the look of them, and the accent I think. I never really liked the end game content, too much commitment and seriousness involved, I just liked to play.
Sevenofmine:
That’s… very interesting take on things. It suggests that the anti-SJ crowd, in general, is simply extraordinarily vocal in comparison to their numbers. If that’s the case, then a big part of the problem is that polling is often done for current customers, rather than the populace at large, and the influx of new custom from making a pro-SJ change at least balances the outraged conservatives.
So if anyone DID stop shopping at Macy’s once they started employing African-Americans, then they were countered by the new influx of people of color who felt more comfortable shopping there.
If this could be consistently shown to be the case, it would be a huge boon for the various social justice movements in general. It would be a way to directly address the timidity of those who fear a backlash–showing that standing up for progress can actually push your profits up, and at least won’t cut into them.
I’m just wondering why almost every post that starts with “I’m just wondering” usually seems to be something kind of… unfortunate.
Dear “Probably Troll from GG”
Men can and do have their own spaces! My hometown’s church had men’s and women’s breakfast groups, that people could opt into going. Men can always invite their guy friends over for a barbeque. Men can choose to go out fishing, with just their guy friends.
On an individual level, people are allowed to go hang out with just the friends they invite.
Unfortunately, I think you mean, “why can’t men have sole rights to anything they think is cool? Why do fishing shops have to let women buy lures? Why do women get to buy and have opinions about games? Why do you have to let them play in MMOs?” and suchlike.
Simple: Because just like you’re allowed to go hang out and do activities with your friends, so are women. No ‘hobby’ can rightly be declared a “one gender only space”, because it’s not a space, it’s a concept.
Aha. Yep. Definitely troll from GG. Posing as a reasonable sort asking a reasonable question works better when
a) the question is legit reasonable
and
b) you don’t link back to your twitter with tons of comments about how SJWs should tear each other apart (figuratively).
@RougeStar 13
Oh, dear, I’m going to possibly be nicer to you than a lot of other people will be here. And you’ll kind of deserve a lot of what they’ll have to say. I have had a bunch of friends in the past who were Masons, and I understood their desire to have a “men-only” space in a lot of ways. The problem is that a lot of “men-only” spaces end up being spaces where men conduct business that unfairly gives women a disadvantage trying to compete in the same business, or where men try to declare that women can’t do something they find fun, too (like gaming).
You want to get together with just guys and talk about stuff that doesn’t have a lot of effect on anything in the outside world because it’s a “safe space,” I’m okay with that. But as soon as it starts to carry over into, well, we’re giving “him” the promotion because of this great conversation we had in our man space or we’re “pretending” you don’t like gaming because we want to declare it our space and something that should totally be for US, therefore you have to go away, then NO.
I mean, what if I said that cookies are for women and have always been for women. Women have traditionally made them and have been more interested in cookie recipes from other women. Cookie recipes have always been marketed toward women. Therefore, you can’t say anything about anything you like about cookies if you’re a man. And I don’t want to read any article that talks about what men like about cookies. Men don’t eat cookies. If they do, I’m going to just pretend they don’t. You are a man and you have something to say about cookies? Well, fuck off! You think you might be able to make better cookies than a woman? NO FUCKING WAY. You’re a pathetic dick. You just made a better cookie than I did? I was off my game, go slink back to your corner. You can’t fucking eat cookies. If you do, you’d better just fucking be happy to eat the ones “we” like.
And I wanted to be nastier, there, but I couldn’t come up with any kind of male slurs that were equivalent to the kind of slurs that are common for women.
Because a single gender can’t lay claim to entire form of media, dumbass. You can have a men’s only Steam group, or whatever. You can’t have video games as a whole any more than women can exclude man from say, ballet dancing just because more women like ballet than men.
Please tell me that’s not a serious question.
Just going to say this randomly here… All Women Guilds are the best thing ever in MMOs. I love the one I’m in in ESO 😀
@Pandapool:
We’re using the AT Launcher to handle mods. It’s free and not off steam, steam is just how I’ve been giving people the IP address and guiding them through installation. Eventually I’ll need your minecraft name so I can whitelist you.
In terms of lag, no harm and trying and seeing how it goes. If there’s gonna be a longer term server, we’ll probably want to set up something more accessable to different computers (so smaller mods or just vanilla).
Paradoxical Intention, EJ, Fabe, and Falconer all have logged on, so if you can contact any of them for the server info, you can log on. I don’t want to share my e-mail because it has my name in it…
@Kirby
That’s understandable. Thank you. I’ll just need to figure out how modded servers work since I’ve only played vanilla. I’m assuming I need to install the mods.
I’ve also only played vanilla single player before. My experience thus far is:
a) There are many, many more resources
b) HOLY SHIT MINOTAURS
c) Massive performance issues (might be mods, might be online play)
I had a great time though. Thanks kirby!
@Pandapool:
Luckily, the AT Launcher takes care of everything for you. Make sure you have 64-bit java installed, then just download it and run it, then follow these instructions to get it set up right:
1. Link the launcher to your minecraft account. On the right, click “Accounts,” and add your account with your name and password.
2. Go to “Mod Packs” and select Resonant Rise from the list. Click “New Instance” to install it. Select the top version, and when it gives you screen asking for optional mods, click the checkbox next to “Project Flux” and “Biomes o Plenty”
3. Install, which will take a while.
4. After that, you can go to “Instances” to run the game. You’ll have to get the server IP from somewhere, and get me your Minecraft name so I can whilelist you.
@ freemage
I’ve had that impression for quite a long while.
I’ve had experiences talking to people who will use the term “SJW” derisively but don’t know anything of my ties to online social justice spaces. I’ve found that if I speak very carefully and avoid certain words/terms/phrases that manospherians consider to be liberal dog whistles, they’ll actually agree completely with what I say about how systemic bigotry works.
I think our culture fills people’s heads with certain ideas, which they associate with certain words or phrases which are filed under the heading of “bad”. Like feminism or rape culture, wage gap, etc. They’re filed under the heading of “bad” but I don’t really think most people have actually thought it through. They just hear these words and respond to this learned cue to completely disengage from the substance of what’s being said. When push comes to shove, I don’t think most people have enough conviction in these ideas to actually lift a finger. To go back to the Macy’s example, they might happily check the “no” box on a piece of paper that got shoved into their hand but when it becomes a matter of driving an extra several miles out of their way to go shopping, well…maybe it’s not such a big deal after all.
So yeah I think the number of people willing to actually go out of their way to oppose social justice is probably pretty small. I think anti-SJ groups have FAR more bark than they do bite.
I have anecdotal experience of this kind of thing too. I’ve mentioned it a little bit on the recent threads about the reddit-splosions. Bigotry and assholishness in general drive away at least as many people as they attract. I suspect that we vastly underestimate how many people are waiting in the wings to support businesses, organizations, etc. which openly support equality.
@Pandapool
Yeah. I used to think dailies sucked. Then, with six 90+ toons (that I still play) and an almost 90 (and two or three lower ones that I play for fun, since leveling is what I actually, usually find fun), I started playing WoD. Blizz listened to the players. They mostly took dailies away.
But garrisons are so fucking expensive! And I feel like I have to spend more time for less reward in WoD than I did when there were lots of dailies. I don’t want to get my two 100s on for two hours each, every day, to spend time gold or rep grinding before I can go do something fun (not to mention, filling up my barn at least weekly and making sure every toon gets on to do its crafting daily and empty out its mine and herb garden). That’s like five hours per day commitment before I can even start doing anything I think is fun. Even though dailies felt a bit like a job before WoD, in retrospect, it felt a bit more fun than what I have now, and like it was less of a time commitment. Especially, IMO (and again, I almost always have a minority opinion), but I thought MoP dailies were pretty well-designed, for the most part, with some variation each day, but granting a reasonable amount of rep and gold reward.
I totally love that you have a complete back story for your main and can’t figure out why you think you’re not good at RP. I never played on a WoW RP server until a while back when I made a toon (mostly because people on this site friended each other and chose that server). I didn’t end up running into any mammotheers on the server, which is cool. Really, who wants to start over again? But I did do something I’ve never done before, which was sign up for an RP campaign thingy. It was something I didn’t even know existed in WoW, and totaly cool, and it kind of blew my mind that there were people out there doing that sort of thing.
On a side note, this Minecraft thing sounds fun, but I’m totally clueless about MC. I guess I could try to download it, and change my Steam social status from “invisible to everyone,” and get my son to teach me a bit of Minecraft. Will you guys be gentle with a total n00b? 🙂
@Kirby
Okay, got it. I have your Steam name so I’ll just message you through that. ^^
Men are perfectly entitled to their own spaces. Build a tree house and put up a “No girls allowed” sign. Set up a forum on the internet. Make a dudes only guild in your MMO of choice. Build a man cave in your basement and only let your dude friends into it. And I mean, last I knew there were no female players in the NBA or the NFL or MLB, or NHL. DCI (Drum Corps International) has at least 2 male only drum corps; there may be more that I don’t know about. You can have all the male only spaces that you want. What you don’t get to do is rope off entire vast swaths of society and declare them male only spaces.
Further, what space comparable to video games do you imagine to be for women only? I mean I know there are spaces, topics etc that dudes will scoff at and deride because they’re considered chick things but name me an actual entire hobby, profession, field of academic study that is considered to be the sole province of women. I won’t hold my breath.
Because the main reason women need women-only spaces is because men threaten and harass them, silence them, and ruin shared spaces for them.