Male status and performance moderates female-directed behaviours (2015)
journals.plos.org
journals.plos.org
I recently saw some compilations posted by female streamers of the abuse they receive. It was pretty scary, and the community is uniquely aggressive for some reason.
I am a particularly bad player myself. I actually quit playing with strangers because the abuse made the game not fun, and I am a male.
In my experience low skill players receive an equal amount of harassment, but where I was being called The "N" Word, homosexual slurs, and just told to kill myself, women were given extremely detailed descriptions of how they would be raped, murdered and even cannibalized.
The stuff children think it is acceptable to say to a women anonymously is INSANE. And we have no way of reporting someone for being the next Harvey Weinstien or even Ted Bundy and getting them reliably removed from the game.
This is fundamentally different from in person harassment or bullying. These things dont happen in every round, far from it, and there is nothing stopping people from muting microphones and/or leaving toxic games.
There is no line to be drawn here. Offense is taken, not given. The first line of defense should be to teach people to ignore trolls, as this is the only realistic way to get rid of them. You can't go around arresting 10 year olds for whatever you happen to consider offensive.
>next Harvey Weinstien or even Ted Bundy
That is some extreme paranoia. People online say these things fundamentally because they know that others will find them unacceptable. By crying out over something so innocuous, you encourage the behavior.
Edit: I'd also like to add, we are complaining about bad words in games that simulate killing, murder, and war. Is that consistent, or rational?
The counter to that is, "The pen is mightier than the sword." We might treat them differently than physical violence, but words are not harmless.
Even the supreme court of the United States of 'but muh free speech' America has struck down the notion of threats of violence being a form of protected speech.
Also, where in sweet jesus do you come from that threats of horrific violence--anything short of aggravated assault--is COMPLETELY above-board?
If you use this language with your coworkers, you are liable to be fired. If you use this language with your subordinates, you are liable to be fired and charged with harassment. If you use this language to a server at a restaurant, you are liable to be expelled from the property.
Notably, if you use this language on Hacker News, your account will get thrown directly into the Sun.
This language is not tolerable, and it is absolutely not harmless (want citations?).
> To explore social constructionist and evolutionary explanations for sexist behaviour, we examine how individual performance and social standing affect female-directed male behaviour using an online first-person shooter video game, Halo 3 (see methods for greater details regarding the game).
Or start moderating a forum. I mod a couple of subreddits, and from that experience it is literally impossible for me to believe that you are correct.
I'm afraid that, at least some of the time, people are just trying to be as hurtful as possible. The sexism and rape comments are often just what they think is most hurtful.
If you can't work this out from publicly-available evidence on social media, I'm not really sure what to say to you.
There has been games built on the idea of trolling. I have personally been in a guild where the distinction between "just a choice of what words" and "they really mean it" resulted in a person being expelled from the group. The concept is fairly well established, but the effect isn't. This article gives additional data but the interpretation is up for discussion.
For example, do the data say that female players are treated worse by poor performing males, or do poor performing males act more submissive towards high performing males? The article do take a very biological view of the problem, so maybe we should compare the findings with studies done in nature on how animal use displaced aggression. About 80% of aggression in Baboons are are displaced aggression, normally done by a high ranking male having a setback and then go and attacking a low ranking male as form of stress management. If I recall right, the lowest ranking males don't have anyone else to displace the aggression so go after low ranking females instead.
No, the reason why we can't have civil discussions is mostly that the same sorts of people who commit disgusting gendered harassment also feel a need to deny that they do so (and that anyone else does so), and attempt to nit-pick apart anyone who asserts a patently obvious fact about our society.
There's not really room for debate on "is gendered harassment of women, as a qualitatively distinct thing from generic bullying, a real thing that exists".
Also, don't accuse people of committing gendered harassment with nothing to support it. This is exactly the 7th circle of hell comments that sctb mentions above. Just because some disagree with you it don't mean they are racist, sexist, or spawn of Satan. Name calling is just an other form of harassment.
Just because homophobic comments are mostly directed at male players don't make homophobia a "gendered harassment of men, as a qualitatively distinct thing from generic bullying". People are allowed to a different view if something is a gendered harassment of women, gendered harassment of men, and what the cause of it. The use of facts and supportive statements is how civil discussion handles it.
People are entitled to their own views, but not to their own facts. Denial of facts that can be openly verified by any person is clear and convincing evidence of bad faith, and I have no rhetorical obligation to be charitable to someone who does so.
When you can acknowledge verifiable reality, though, perhaps we can discuss it.
> Low-status males that have the most to lose due to a hierarchical reconfiguration are responding to the threat female competitors pose.
This seems to imply that females are seen as competitors in a male hierarchy. But competitors for what, exactly? Male hierarchies establish a dominance scale, and as the study recalls:
> Even in modern day society, dominance and not attractiveness is associated with college male mating success
(italics mine)
So the position in a male hierarchy largely influences male mating success. What does the position of women in the same hierarchy influence? Even if it improved mating success (and this is debatable), it would improve mating success with men, that is, partners the other males are not interested in. In other words, for a male only the position in the male hierarchy should be relevant, not the position in a global hierarchy.
On the other end, competition should be fierce among males as it's strictly the male hierarchy that determines mating opportunities. But this is at odds one of the results of the study, that women are the target of most abuse while interactions among males are much more guarded.
I don't believe the point the researchers are trying to make is that low-status men could be lashing out because they're afraid women could beat them in the mating arena, but because women higher in the hierarchy could make them lose.
Note well: I am not justifying any of this. I'm just saying what I think is going on in their minds, in that culture.
Well, to put it bluntly, if a woman "looks up to" a male, she is likely to mate. For males, that means the global hierarchy matter more than just male hierarchy. They need more women under them in this hierarchy to mate more.
This entire topic is flamebait, except only critical arguments are punished.
This is dangerous, because it creates a false appearance of consensus. Further, without allowing for healthy skepticism, we practice something more akin to religion than science.
What are "signals of dominance"
The finding is interesting, but wouldn't it be more interesting still if they had performed the same study with the sexes reversed also? We would then know for definite if there is a sex difference in behaviour. As it is we don't know. Women are just as capable of bad behaviour as men, and to think otherwise is to subscribe to the sugar and spice and all things nice school of sexism.
Also, imagine substituting men and women for black and white, or jew/non-jew, etc. I suspect the ethics board might be asking questions.
We know that lower-status members of a community tend to be more hostile to newcomers / outsiders. The specific question here was ‘does this apply in this particular circumstance’.
Incidentally, your agenda is showing.