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Women gamers... [mod edit - Topic About Online Harassment in Games)
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"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
None of that is relevant to what I was trying to say. A lot of men like being men, being called girls or pussys may be insulting to women, but is it not also an insinuation of lack of masculinity of the male? is this not an attack ont he males sense of his own masculinity? Is this not a gender specific attack? Just because your thought is in a straight line does not mean thats how the world works.
Just because a word can isult a female does not mean it is not equally offensive, though in a different way to a male. Yet for the most part males largely ignore this, the rally to arms only occurs when these attacks are done against another group of people. A group who wants to be equal in all regards, yet insists on special treatment.
Here is equality for you, continue bringing this up in your own way, you have every right to as an equal member of a democracy. Just know that you are the minority, as the majority could care less. It is largely ignored because it honestly bares little relevance in a persona every day life. A few extreme cases have led to extreme consequences, however to most these online trolls are harmless.
Your equality is assured as you have your rights to protest, just know that the majority moves the wheel, and since we all deal with the same problem the majority has chosen to deal with it in the way that is most logical. Censorship can never happen for your own needs because it starts a domino effect to censor everything.
So being told to thicken your skin may be misogynist, but it is the best damn advice you are going to get because i will be damned If ten years from now we are mindless censored drones, because every individual is insulted by some different thing, so the only way to equal us all is to censor everything and mind numb us in pseudo-moral political correctness.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
As a male gamer I have been called certain names and my sexuality speculated on by players who do not even know me, because of the character I was playing. Or because I had kicked their arse in combat.
As someone who realy doesn't care what other people say I just wind them up even more till they rage quit. Its very easy.
Online gaming has a lot of name calling no matter if your a man or woman.
I think its great more women are playing games online and in MMO's its refreshing to hear them on voice comms.
If a person is not mature enough to defend themself from attacks they are probably not mature enough for the games they are playing. One of my favorite YouTube 'stars' is "GirlGoneGamer" who plays on the common sexism in CoD by starting every video by cooking some food (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQFWs4HrRKU).
Imagine a white person going to the hood. I presume a white person traveling to the hood would get made fun of how small, skinny and white he is. This white kid has the choice of NOT GOING TO THE HOOD.
The same is true with video games. If you do not want to deal with racism, sexism, or any of that stuff then don't play the games that draw on it heavily (League of Legends/Call of Duty).
It's like when you are watching the old movie Huckleberry Finn and his friend's name is Nigger Jim. If you find the fact that the locals refer to him Nigger Jim you can just not watch the movie. The liberalism of language in the 70s did nothing but enhance racist slang.
If you are upset by people calling you names just play games that have a G rating. Problem solved.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
It can be argued that in a given situation, it is worse to insult someone based on something that is likely irrelevant to the situation than something that may be relevant. Using that reasoning, if person A thinks person B did a very bad move which he thinks is due to B being new to the game, then using "noob" to insult player B is better than to use " fat whore". Neither "fat" or "whore" can directly explain why the "bad" move was done, but being new to the game can.
Neither being short, socially inept, talking funny or eating weird foods would directly explain why the "bad" move was done, so they would all be worse than calling someone a "noob".
I do see that the effect of an insult which is very much tied to the actual scenario may have a larger impact on the person. The impact does not necessarely need to be completely negative though.
As for your last paragraph: can't really do a statement about the situation in the 18th century, I would have to read more about that subject.
As for equal and unequal treatment: men and women are biologically equal in many aspects, but not equal in several aspects as well. How we treat them should reflect that. This is why we seperate women and men in athletic competitions, but we strive to give them equal salary for a certain work done.
Very much this. The idea that you have to treat me differently because I am a woman IS sexist, and it follows a subtext that I am weak and incapable of defending myself or that I am not strong enough to take it. The special treatment is what would be misogyny, NOT name-calling or harassment. Literally everyone gets harassed in online games. It is stories like this one that cause sexism to persist. It is people that feel they have to be PC that cause any -ism to persist. Walking on eggshells is what perpetuates the idea that I am weak just because I am a woman. When you do this, you are subconsciously (I hope not deliberately) treating me differently because you think I am weaker. Giving anyone special treatment just because of race/sex/orientation/religion is what accentuates the differences between us and makes us think we are not equal.
This might make me angrier than any other gaming issue.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
but now take a black kid and throw him in to a white neighborhood where he is made fun of. Now all of a sudden these white kids are labeled racist and expelled from school. (You see this often in the news) This is what this so called "equality" everybody wants get us. It is nothing but a sack of double standards and special rules that these groups dont give a crap about because they favor their own group.
Nobody wants to be equal, they simply want to be the group in power. You will never see a black kid labeled a racist for making fun of a white kid. Until I do see this there will never be equality. Until every single person is held to the same set of laws we will never be equal.
As it is right now it is like we have a book of laws, yet it is seperated in to different appendices according to group of people, in which the main law is used as merely a guide and each group has its own string of laws, regulations and social norms. People have a skewed idea of equality.
The former poster gave a conclusion, then you asked for rationalization, I gave you a rationilazation based on the axiom that an insult is worse if it is irrelevant to the situation. The axiom was implied in my previous post.
god i wish there was a way to like posts, i would smash my head in to my keyboard 1000 times to give this 1000 likes. You want true equality. The moment the special treatment ends the equality begins.
While calling someone a male a "pussy", is a gender-specific attack, it does not attack the gender "male" in itself. It is instead refering to that the person is being a coward, which may very well be of relevance in the situation.
Depending on which country and even which city you live in, you may or may not belong to the majority. As the internet continue to grow in influence, I believe how we act there is becoming more and more important for the overall population.
While thickening the skin is one way for specific people to handle certain people, it doesn't mean that we should accept things the way they are and the we should stop trying to change and arguing against "wrong" behaviour.
A white kid should be able to go to the hood without being made fun of how small, skinny and white he is. The society should not just forget the problem and it is their duty to actively try to change the situation for the better.
42% of gamers are now women in the United States, no?
Does that not mean that women are also insulting others, both men and women? Why are the males being singled out in this? Do we get some form of a pass because we happen to have breasts in an online environment?
I can assure all of you that the verbal abuse is exponentially worse between two women that go at it than it is between a male and a female.
The problem as a whole is not restricted to women alone. It's a universal issue on the internet and has been around forever. Why a few of us believe we get a pass and we should be up in arms about a natural occurrence in an online environment is beyond me. Especially because there are a large number of us that do the -exact same thing- that was being covered in the article.
Too many people truly do need to grow thicker skin. The fact of the matter is that these are random comments tossed at you by a random person that you will never see in your daily life. They are absolutely meaningless. However, if it comes into your daily life from a virutal environment, there is an issue. But that is an entirely different argument.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that the internet allows you to remain anonymous and hide behind a screen of text. This also means that your gender is and always will be an unknown factor unless you make it otherwise evident, whether by telling someone or speaking over a VOIP. It's actually a very indiscriminate piece of technology if everyone would look at it equally; No one gives a damn what gender, ethnicity or religious belief you are. If someone were going to insult you, then they're going to insult you. The only difference your gender makes is what form of insult is headed your way. It's the exact same thing in real life. It's something you don't take to heart and simply walk away from.
Not nearly as big of an issue as it seems we're making it out to be. Quite embarassing at times, actually.
Well while we're making this a larger issue who is "the society" that you are describing. A lot of people like to throw around generic terms to try and make a point. But honestly who is "the society." Are we talking about everyone? Are we talking about the racist black community? Are we talking about government?
Society isn't just one thing.
And change what for the better? Who decides what is better. Am I supposed to just accept that an egalitarian model of society is the best one? The best one considering that we are all born into inequality?
Or can we just be grown ups and make choices. These girls who are supposedly being harassed in games don't have to be in that atmosphere. They have the ultimate choice of logging off. In an MMO they can just change servers. They don't even have to declare that they are women. If you are a Jew and you choose to travel to Egypt you are purposely going to a hostile location and choosing to set yourself up for bad experiences.
I cannot change how people feel or what they feel. We can cry about how people ought to be, all we want but it won't change anything. The best we can do is choose what atmosphere we put ourselves in.
Next on the list of sexism witch hunts is removing all sexist references from cinema!
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
So i was reading the linked article and i saw "when she goes online to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" well there you have it. She is playing a shooter online. Shooters have a terrible crowd, especially on the consoles where mostly younger gamers are those who call everyone a bitch or gay. Sorry but that she is calling all these things is nothing new. Infact its the main reason why i don't play shooters online on my console, cause i as guy will be named a "fag, gay, and any other word those kids learned these days that sugest you are gay". Im not even gay but hey these kids shout a lot of crap. If she chooses to play it online than she has no other option than as sugested earlyer grow a thicker skinn. Just as the rest of us did as well, or play on the pc where the crowd is a bit more mature (but even so you can still run into very people).
But in MMORPG's i noticed that if people only think you are a girl that they treat you different, mostly the complete oposite from what happens in CoD. I had a female character in WoW, and i noticed a huge difference between playing as her or as my male chars. For example when you where doing a dungeon, if people thought i was a girl (i never said i was one and if they asked i would be honest that iam a guy) they would quickly pass on items they needed as well. In general they where much more helpfull and seeing i played on a RP server it was also a lot easyer to find some RP or even rise in rank in a guild. Now i always told i was a guy when asked but i know from some female friends that some guys go really far when they find out you are a female gamer.
But in this article i find it rather soft what is said. "Go back to the kitchen"? Really? And bitch is something they say to everyone, including guys. Its just imature kids who shout a lot while their parents are gone (even if they are 25) while in the RL they probally hardly dare to open their mouths. But i seen some female gamers doing terrible things in WoW. I had a female friend on the server who left the server cause she got on the bad side of another female gamer who got very jalouse at her. My friend got harresed by lvl 1 chars and later lvl 5's with all kinds of treaths (is that the right grammar?), from "We gonna kick your ass in RL if you don't quit this game" too "Im gonna find out where you live and kill you". And later she got even called on her phone in RL by all kind of people who threathend her. And why? Because one girl was jalouse at her RP. Now that i find harrasment and something you can't grow a thicker skinn on. But words like bitch and such...nah that is something you can ignore and very simple in shooters, just don't talk trough a mic unless you are part of a clan and you know these people, so you know they won't call you terrible things.
And girls remember, the guys who call you those terrible things in a game are pathetic lossers anyway. I mean the article refers also to a guy from a tv show about gamers who was harrassing his own female team mate. When you read that article and see the pictures you suddenly realise that he is just another fat bastard who is the stereotype gamer that hollywood uses in movies. A sad guy who is really really fat, who has no social skills and thinks that because he can kill you in a game he is a better person in RL. They feel cool about calling others names cause other people think he is cool when he does that. But reallity is that these guys are the biggest lossers in the real world. So ignore them and just laugh inside how pathetic they are. If they talk about your breast size than remember that those guys have boobs themselfs.
We've had multiple women in different age groups in our guild over the years WOW, Rift, WAR, EQ2 etc etc and most of the time any negativity was sexual harrassment. I only have found WOW to be horrible for women gamers just because the number of perves in that game is endless. My wife had quite an ignore list from the three different servers we played on there. But female toon in games or not if you are not openly trolling the chats female or male for that matter, you usually don't run into to many problems.
Society as in "we as a group of people", not individuals. "Society" can refer to large groups such as the country as a whole.
As a group, certain behaviour is deemed to be worse than other. Society expects you to at least follow certain rules (Laws if the society refered to is a country).
When I wrote "society", I was mostly thinking in terms of countries and groups of countries.
As for what are being born: we are extremely equal in many aspects and different in other ones. We are far more equal than we are unequal biologically, which is why we all belong to the same biological specie, the human one.
[mod edit]
Why thank you, very much. I don't post here often anymore, but this just got to me in a big way.
I can't stand women who, like the joke I have heard guys say before, complain about not making the same amount of money as a man (though this is almost totally a thing of the past in most Western countries, the East and Middle East is where we still have a LOT of work to do), and then demand their men pay for everything like it is a inalienable female right to have men buy them things.
Or think they can slap a man and then get outraged if the man hits back. I wouldn't ever hit a man unless I was trying to start a fight. Because hitting someone you don't want to fight is ridiculous.
A little logic, and a real sense of equality, not entitlement, will take society a very long way toward true equality for all.
Edit: I do want to clarify equality does not and should not mean sameness. We are not all the same, and we are not equal in all things. Some people are better at some things, some people are weaker or less clever or disabled or disenfranchised, but they should all be treated with the same degree of respect (or in this case, disrespect), because that is what is fair. When we embrace the idea that we are all different from one other, but that we all have as much value as anyone else, then we will be getting somewhere.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
Funny i had a discusion with a friend yesterday about this. And i totally agree with you here. We all have our strenghts and weaknesses, male or female. I see it alot that woman demand to be treated equal (and that is their good right offcourse) but the fact remains that nature has made sure that there is a difference between the male and female. To begin with out bodies are build differently. The male body is made for harder work, as it was his task when we where still hunting the fields for food and lived in caves. But does that mean woman are less strong? No, not at all. Of what i heard giving birth is a hell of a pain, pain we guys can't imagine. To endure such pain you must be a pretty strong person. Just your strenght is somewhere else than in lifting heavy things.
And as you said, the world isn't equal. Infact most people who shout we all should be equal do hate atleast one group of people. Hating them for their religion, skin collor, sexual preference, etc. Like some people shouting we all should be equal, black or white. But than when someone says that gay people should be able to get married they are very much against it. That makes no sense right? What happened to we should all be equal?
I don't believe in world peace or no more hunger in the world, just as i don't believe that gamers will even change either and stop cursing and harrasing. There never will be world peace cause we all want it but no one is prepared to give away the power they have at the moment, and there will always be someone who wants more power as others. There never will be a end to the hunger around the world cause even though we all say we find it so sad what happens in the third world countries, we sure love to have our luxeriouse items. And gamers will never change either cause they are save behind the internet. They can call you a bitch or fag. What you wanna do? Shoot them in the game? Thats the worst thing you can do. In RL they will never call you such things cause you can actually punch them in the face for it, or better, they have to look you in the face and than they lose their big mouths.
And its not even a gamers thing. Around the whole internet you see such behavior. A female friend of mine signed up on a dating site, you would be amazed with the offers about 80% of the guys make there (and she showed them to me). She wasn't even a member for half an hour and already recieved 20 messages "Hey i saw your profile, wanna have sex?" and well i keep it clean cause of the forum rules but the reall messages where a lot worse.....and she didn't even had a picture on the site yet, just the fact she was a girl was a reason for many guys to send sexual emails. And on most forums you will find people who call others names. Sure its not as bad as in a game i guess but it does happen everywhere on the internet.
Read this BBC article earlier in the day.
Some folks have already touched on it dealing with mmorpgs. In earlier mmorpgs that pertained to a smaller community, people didn't get away with such actions so easily. Players needed to be social to advance and have positive interactions with the community like SWG and UO. If you did play like a moron, you pretty much played the game solo and as an outcast - which was quite fitting for some. Skip foward a few years, and so man of these mmorpgs are single player online games that require next to no interactions in order to advance. Folks can be douche bags all the time, and they don't have to worry about not being able to get buffs from the doc or better weapons from the local weaponsmith.
I don't play console games or many FPS, so I can't go into that section (all of my experiences involve listening to lots of swearing) - but with increasing popularity of the MMORPG, we are all going to get a lot more raging kids and general morons. I know that community talks a lot of crap. Some of my friends in grad school make interesting comments about going home and be sworn out by a 13 year old who spends 10+ hours a day gaming
How bad you can talk internet crap is apparently freaking awesome for kids and a good deal of others...
I pretty much get along with everyone in games I play, so I haven't experienced much direct trash thrown into my face. I also try to join more adult guilds, but I do lots of pick up groups too.
I play most mmorpgs with my sister, and I don't take well to sexist, racist, derogatory, prejudice comments etc. crap thrown out at anyone, just like in real life. Sometimes her husband also joins us, so that's one more to back us up, not like I need it haha.
The solo-ers, if they're morons, have to play nice anyways if they want a healer (normal class of sister) and whatever class I'd be playing to stay and help them out
another fail post from BBC, these guys cant understand the world of games, how big and indifferent it is ..!
there is no reason to repeat the previous posts here, just to mention that is sad a big journalist office being out of reality ...
Seems that the thread started to get a bit derailed about sexism in general and bullying in the real world.
Utlimately a lot of it has to do with control. People feel threatened when they think they are losing in a video game and to regain control they actually lose it again by behaving unsociably. A lot of gamers I have come across have issues in real life. The trick is to find those who are chilled out.
Anyway, yes, I think at some level everyone has to grow a thick skin while playing games. I believe people have to grow a thick skin in the real world too because there is always going to be difference and difference will always be commented on negatively. I wish it were not so: I believe difference is something to be celebrated, it is the spice of life after all, but a lot of people feel threatened by it. If I had a dime for everytime I was descriminated against, and not just because of my gender, I would be very wealthy. I am referring to ANY descrimination whether positive or negative.
In gaming, for some odd reason, being female is different, though we make up 47% of the world's population and it is becoming more and more likely that you will meet one of us ingame.
I just want to be treated like one of the guys, please. I dislike being handheld or told I don't know how to play a game because I have tits or whatever. I prefer to learn the hard way, make mistakes, and earn what I can earn, especially in PvP. I become a better team member that way. I am not a princess, I am not a "gold digger", and I am not the evil witch who wants to rise to the top of the guild at the expense of all of my female peers. I am just a gamer who likes relaxing in games, grouping up to kill stuff and find a few phats before the end of the day.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I feel as if everyone missed the point I was trying to make initially. I don't mind trash talking or minor insults in game. It is when we get to a certain level of vitrolic verbal abuse and actions that go beyond that, where it becomes a problem. One cannot change one's gender barring major surgery, and in comparison, I am a white homosexual male, and I will never cease to be this. Being insulted on this on a regular basis in games I find completely unacceptable in a game, which no matter how public it seems, is not a space or environment for hate speech. Game companies can have harsh and dark hostile environments like in EVE online, but what i just described belongs in no game coming from the mouth or text box of another player.
More importantly, the fact that people may consider normal insults and what I've described as one in the same, just goes to show how desensitized and broken most people have become towards this, and it is disappointing. I played for Goonswarm in EVE online for half a decade, and even we ban and kick out people who spout off their mouth with exceptionally awful language. Use of the phrase fag is pretty much a ban on the Something Awful forums 100% of the time. And if a 10 dollar lesson doesn't learn itself fast, they just ban you for good.
Hmm, well lets hope they take things in context. the word 'fag' is slang for cigarette in the UK. It would be a bit rough being banned for using it in that sort of context because of language differences.
I'm a guild leader on swtor and have been in leading positions in guilds in various other games. There were only two times I removed someone from a guild (not counting inactivity kicks), both of which cases went past the obvious joking around.
I don't kick/remove people easily and most of the times it will be talked out before it comes to that, but when I do I always launch an 'investigation'. One of the times it was temporarily and he immediately apologised the day after, the other had no good explanation and that's where I draw the line.
Of course this doesn't go for sexism only, it goes for abusive behaviour, racism, anything that really hurts people and sometimes it's hard to draw the line between the offensive joking that has become the norm and offensive behaviour, but asking people to tone it down helps there.
With this I just reflect my real life ideals: talking trash and offensive is fun, but it has to be in good spirits and there is a grey area where I won't go.
"We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
And for MMORPGs ever so true...