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> it's just words. Ignore them.

This advice is pretty hollow coming from someone who doesn't have to put up with constant sexual harassment, who doesn't have to deal with cat calls and the fear of being raped that comes with them, and who can use their real voice on game chat without getting rape threats. Check your privilege.

You dont think being called a fagget is sexual harassment?

It is, but unless you actually are gay in real life and have had to deal with being called a faggot in real life, I'm going to have more sympathy for females who have to deal with sexual harassment online. They're both terrible behavior that we (as a gaming community) should object to when we hear it.

I have sympathy for everyone who is harassed online, I do not think anyone is actually being singled out for harassment because of who or what they are. If people really wanted to fix it they need to admit that this fact is true first, because treating this as a sexism problem is disingenuous.

Women get way way way more shit online than men. Ignoring that is disingenuous.

You seem to be making a lot of assertions of fact without anything to back it up. I would say that is disingenuous.

Fair enough, I just assumed people would accept the premise that women get more harassment online than men without me having to cite a study. It seems pretty obvious to me.

Lets think about it for a second though, if gaming is male dominated and incredibly hostile and full of harassment wouldn't the victim of the harassment be predominately male?

> the premise that women get more harassment online than men

If you are a woman, online, than you'll be harassed more than if you were a man, online.

If you want to go by ratio, then yeah, but that has nothing to do with the argument. The point is that the gaming community is driving away women with this behavior.

"The point is that the gaming community is driving away women with this behavior", I havent seen any studies or research to suggest that women stop playing games after being harassed, no more or less than men.

It does, in fact, have to do with your claim that harassment happens to women more often. That can't be the case if men outnumber women by a large factor, which is the case in hardcore gaming.

The "community" has no obligation to keep people in, it is the individual's choice what to do and how to deal with anything resulting from that choice.

As for women vs men, we all take our daily abuse, and in an anonymous online community the level of abuse is just that much higher. We learn to deal with the adolescent abuse because that's the only remedy.

Bullies will be bullies, they hone in on (perceived) weaknesses, when a woman feels harassed in an online community, it's not the fault of the community at large, it's just a fact of the world we live in.

I no longer play games, but I used to play a lot online, the abuse was daily. I and men I know receive non-violent abuse daily in real life well, not to mention the physical threats flying around; know that as a man anyone anywhere has the "right" to threaten you just for being a man. (Check your female privilege.)

Female harassment is a sham, it's just general harassment. Difference is women are allowed to complain and make a fuzz. Ideally we'd all be allowed to do so.

You're assuming I'm female.

Nobody should accept any premise from you. You are a shameless, serial liar.

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/08/158433079/virtual-harassment-g...

http://www.vg247.com/2012/09/08/study-80-of-gamers-believe-s...

> Matthew’s study found that women were harassed four times more than men

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/08/sexua...

http://www.themarysue.com/academic-study-game-harassment/

HN, please downvote this guy.

I think you should'nt ask people to downvote that is against the etiquette, I think you will find that this study you link to Matthew's is a very biased study as it only focuses on one type of harassment (sexual), the type that women are over represented in, but then when describing the conclusion calls it harassment, but didnt actually ask the participants if they were harassed, just sexually harassed.

I think you should'nt ask people to downvote that is against the etiquette

I would say that's correct. That doesn't mean I don't feel just the same as the parent, though. It seems about half the posts from transitionality that I've seen on the page so far are shameless attacks. It's blatant enough that I'm actually considering whether it's a performance piece trying to make a point about harassment (but which side the point is supposed to be on is unclear, as it could just be very poorly thought out).

In either case, I don't think it has any place on this site.

Agreed, but asking people to downvote comes across as bullying.

pyrocat told lies.

She stated in several places a 1-in-6 statistic for female sexual harassment, which is a lie.

http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-in-four-lie...

She also stated in several places that females are the victims of rape more often, which is again a lie.

http://betweenletters.quora.com/More-Men-Are-Raped-In-the-US...

I've made these corrections at several location throughout the thread, wherever I could catch her doing it. It's very unlikely for you to not have seen them.

I can only conclude that your mobbing campaign against me is knowingly malicious, and that you are in cahoots with pyrocat, if not the same person.

In this context, probably not. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938877

I'm obviously not talking about actual rape happening.

But let's for a second compare it to "I'll beat you up, son!" and the like.

It's the internet. It happens. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that half of the examples on the site that was linked in that article, are nothing more than someone typing the word "b*tch" behind some random insults.

Yeah, there are a lot of assholes on the internet[1]. You can either choose to let it get to you, or you can recognize it for what it is and get on with your life.

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

And the Academy Award for Best Drama goes to...

Let's not pick at straw men here. If you don't see the difference between real rape threats and Xbox LIVE shit talk, you need not wonder why you may make such an easy target for online bullies.

"Check your privilege"? Putting aside the fact that that phrase just sounds gross, perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to assume the situations of online strangers. Check your logic.

There is a difference between "shit talk" and rooting out personal contact information to then send death or rape threats. I don't think anyone expects an experience akin to high tea with the Queen, but no one deserves to be threatened. Everyone, consciously or not, wants respect.

It's simple in theory but hard in practice. It likely has to come from guidance. As a parent, I expect I will have to teach her how to engage with people both on and offline.

There's a reason we force kids to line up and shake the opposing team's hands after a soccer game.

>There is a difference between "shit talk" and rooting out personal contact information to then send death or rape threats.

Of course there is. The problem with this conversation is that it appears to be a polymorphic one. Which of the two are we talking about? I would imagine that there is no consensus on this.

Define constant sexual harassment, what's the context? Just in general? What do you classify as actual sexual harassment?

Everyone has their fair share of shit to deal with, it's unfair to place priority on a cause due to gender.

What about all the shit guys have to deal with? Where are our support programs, where are our campaigns?

For example: one of the things I'm struggling with is finding a girlfriend simply because I do not own a car, and yes I have been rejected on this because "although you're a great guy, if you can't drive me everywhere, I'll find someone lesser who can". Why is it that I have to initiate every relationship? Why do I have to play the "prove yourself" game?

Let's not blow things out of proportion. Name calling is just that, name calling. Ignore it and move on, you need to develop a thick skin.

Women have it great really great in this world. Yes there are things you can't change such as being physically weaker and symptoms of that (rape), but the entitlement I see from women is insane.

You, as a man, have had more privileges and had to put up with less shit from strangers and society, than women. There's really no getting around that. Guys have to deal with gender bullshit too (expectations of wealth, car, muscles .etc), but as a rule, guys have more privilege than women.

expectations of wealth, car, muscles .etc

You state these things like they are trivial. What do you have to put up with as a woman?

Ask your mom.

My mom grew up in a farm in the middle of nowhere with nothing, in a heavily oppressed country, now she's a top tier executive at a bank. I don't think the touchy feely bullshit most women have to deal with and blog about holds a candle to what my Mom has been through, so I'm not sure your equation works.

Thanks for the non-response.

Then ask her about her career at the bank and if she ever felt it would've progressed more easily if she was male. Otherwise you're just making assumptions about her feelings.

No, we've spoken about this intensely. It is our view that if it is not physically hurting you, find a way to mitigate it or use it to your advantage.

My Mother knows her self worth. Sexist comments and remarks don't do anything to her, because she doesn't let others determine who she is or how she feels. If someone calls me a "faggot", why would I get mad? I'm not a "faggot", so how can this persons words possibly shape me into one?

It just helps her differentiate the people she wants to associate with, and the idiots she doesn't want to associate with.

When you grow up in SHIT, you tend to get lost in meaningless details like insults from people that don't matter to you. When you are fending for your life every single day against criminals, rapists, murders, and starvation for the first 20 years of your life, meaningless bullshit like "the white male patriarchy" tends to get lost on you. Insults and ill treatment excite us because it adds fuel to our fire, you now have a weapon to use against somebody. When we get insulted, we don't get upset, we collect it, and use it against them because ultimately it's meaningless and it's THEIR problem, not mine.

My Mom got to where she was by being great at her job and being a very thick skinned and clever social engineer. The assholes were left behind. She could have dwelled, but she didn't. She could have cried all day and night about some off hand remark that probably wasn't even intentionally sexist in nature, but she didn't, and neither should you.

We don't believe in modern pseudo-feminism, sorry.

I work with loads of women from third world countries that worked their asses off for their entire early lives just to afford themselves the CHANCE of making it by coming to a first world country with $0. If they don't get off, where do you get off?

Check your privilege.

> If someone calls me a "faggot", why would I get mad? I'm not a "faggot", so how can this persons words possibly shape me into one?

It's fortunate that you can simply choose not to identify with that particular insult, but what about people who do identify as homosexual? Or who are genderqueer?

Edit: Why does this matter? It's just especially shitty and dehumanizing when you identify as something that is seen as culturally acceptable to debase. Privilege is being able to dismiss things with "Hah! That's ridiculous! I'm not a Foo," which still allows room for and/or even implies the denigration of Foos.

That's not to say you should deviate from your fuck-the-haters approach. It's great that you and your mother have sufficiently thick skin to forge ahead in spite of ill-informed discrimination, but not everyone has the same fortitude. The cultural norms we establish can go a long way toward creating a better context for everyone.

What about them? How does being called a faggot hurt someone who is, in fact, a faggot?

It doesn't. People are so quick to point the finger at everyone but themselves.

No, it's not ME who should decide how I feel, it's YOU that should censor what YOU say, for ME!

Avoid, tell them to fuck off if need be, and continue. It's not a very difficult concept.

I have a feeling that this thread was started by (and is being steered by) a couple of social justice warriors, using a combination of their typical lies, guilt-tripping tactics, and anti-male sexism to socially engineer certain opinions.

It's sad that they thought it would work.

No room in life for losers. Wake and realize we live in the best possible times. Go live in a small village where your primary objective is surviving, then come back to your real life, you will be very quickly humbled.

I really think people are just bored man. In an age where I can watch videos of the Earth set from the moon, what the hell is there really to get excited about?

It's depressing. My grandmothers entire goal in life was to dip her toes in the ocean, something that brought (I can't even imagine) an unreal amount of happiness to her, and she finally experienced this at the age of 70.

We have everything. If you want something, you have to keep your head down, put in the work, and you'll get it. That's it! We don't suffer from 99.99% of the problems that have plagued our species since it's dawn.

The entitlement to perfection is sickening.

I wish we could bottle perspective and force these social justice fucks to gulp it down. They need it badly.

Thanks for the contribution of common sense this thread sorely needed.

Eh? I'm not sure where your antipathy is coming from. I'm just here because I tend to enjoy communities that afford a basic level of courtesy to most folks, and have guidelines and moderation that support that context. Like HN's own http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The facet of gamer culture described in the parent article just kinda bums me out, and I don't think we'd particularly lose much by trying to promote greater civility. Maybe other people feel the same? Regardless, cultural norms don't shift unless people respectfully speak up when things aren't working for them.

That's all I'm here for. And I largely agree with rfnslyr ("WHY ARE WE YELLING?" "I DON'T KNOW.") in terms of developing a thick skin and owning your own reactions being an extremely powerful tool. But maybe we could also try to be nicer to one another, sometimes?

With that, I'll respectfully bow out of the conversation.

> The facet of gamer culture described in the parent article just kinda bums me out, and I don't think we'd particularly lose much by trying to promote greater civility.

Why waste your time trying to culture someone who isn't? A switch won't magically flip in their minds?

Why even waste time on random nerds you don't even know? Just play your game, mute them, and have fun.

Hell yeah I'm all for being nice to everyone.

Social justice is a cult. It's dogmatic, it's detached from reality, and it's insane. I hate all cults equally.

I've pointed out numerous lies being perpetrated by your cohorts (or, more likely, sockpuppets) in this thread.

You won't get anywhere with shit. Not here. You need to just go.

Do you have some sort of contact? Like IRC/Steam or something?

I am homosexual. I really don't care if someone calls me a faggot. What's it to them? If someone cares enough about something as intangible as my sexuality to make a flippant comment, I pity them.

The only reason you ever have to get up in arms is of consequences stemming directly from the sexism. Then there's an actual problem.

> but not everyone has the same fortitude.

That's too bad. Sink or swim. Everyone is much too hyper sensitive from growing up in such a protected and privileged culture.

People often forget that in the end, it's you vs them, crying about it on your blog and writing to newspapers and starting all these silly little groups and protests does not do shit.

Keep your head down, play the game, and when/if you come into a position of power, deal the cards you've been holding on to. That is how society works, and that is how everyone who ever came into a position of power has played the game, men and women alike. In fact my boss is a short fat black woman and I work in the investment sector.

If my mom and coworkers made it, so can you, and if you can't, then that is your problem and something you need to work actively to change, not society.

-----

The reality is people ARE going to have different opinions, good and bad. People WILL make sexist jokes. People will berate you for your gender, just because they can. People will do all sorts of shit. You have to accept that no matter what someones stance is, whether it's wrong in your mind, it is still their right.

It is entirely up to you how to choose to react to it.

> I am homosexual. I really don't care if someone calls me a faggot.

Oh man, I wish the whole world was as easy-going in this as you were. Tires me out. People take offense to anything.

For this comment alone, I have a tremendous amount of respect for you.

Cheers for spreading the word.

Thanks man.

There's a decent adaptation of Peggy McIntosh's white privilege checklist for male privilege over at http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

It's certainly not great, but it's at least an ok starting point for considering disparities in societal privilege and expectations between gender presentations.

I would really like it if you could read this as I think you will see this checklist is bunk.

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

False, I work in IT, it is incredibly easy to get a job for a female, every place I worked for is desperate to hire women and say so.

http://pastebin.com/zu16rEdU

I really do love that your answer to #1 proves #2.

There are a handful of companies that are trying to get more women into tech. That's great! However, that doesn't mean #1 is wrong. It just means your industry (or even those companies) is in the minority.

IT is a very big industry, I work in more of the higher end and in that area, there is a huge push to get more women in, these are the same companies that are incredibly hard to get jobs at for men. I think you will find that push to improve ratios is mostly concentrated on the preferred jobs, based on conditions or pay.

I dont see anyone trying to improve ratios in female dominated jobs, like Teaching and Childcare, and if they did #2 would be the same for men in those cases.

At quite a few companies I have worked at the pre-screening is done by the corporate HR department of which has been 100% female in my experience, then the next level is done by team managers and sales teams, which I have found to be fairly evenly split. It is only when you get into the trenches where the engineers are found that the ratio falls apart.

The funny thing is we all work in the same building in the same office, so the company itself has a pretty good ratio its just the engineering jobs that dont have many women, so you cant say its a culture thing because the culture is the entire company not just one job type and/or segment.

Anecdotal, when I do work for government clients they have a much higher female IT workforce especially engineers, they however get 3 weeks extra annual leave, 7 day fortnights and in some cases you can even work part time. And because of unions the pay is very competitive and if not more than the private sector. However there is a "glass ceiling" in government as all wages are set by collective bargaining and applies to everyone. Where in the private sector you have much more latitude to increase your earning potential at the expense of your free time and personal life, something that a lot of my co-workers (men) do to increase the opportunities that their families are offered. It is this kind of work that some of the female engineers are reluctant to do this, and I would say rightful so, from my discussions with them they are not motivated by the pay but are striving for a balance with work and family. However the men I work with are under a lot of pressure to cover their wives earnings so she can stay and look after the children, something they (the wives) are asking for.

It is a very complex topic but I dont think you can truly have 50/50 ratios in every industry without first removing any difference in motivation to work between men and women, and those with and without families. These motivation factors create a huge bias in how people subjectively choose their working conditions and environment.

Both my girlfriend and I play games regularly online and alone (and have all our lives). She has never received a rape threat. I wonder why?

Because anecdotes aren't data? This is a site aimed at hackers and programmers and you really think the utterly thoughtless logic underlying your post passes muster?

Of which the article linked is a shining example of evidence-backed reasoning.

The entire OP is anecdote.

I'm a gamer. I'm in a guild. We have female members. We all, regardless of gender, have at some point been the target of idiots trying to bully. While it is impossible to deny the existence of the cesspit, I take umbrage at it being perceived as the majority of we gamers. It is a problem, yes. But please don't lump me and my entire guild into the same bucket.

Uh, no one is? The article is very clear about who the problem is.

Yes. It's also wrong. The article itself is the problem, and so are you.

I'd love to hear your reasoning.

It's unsubstantiated, unreasoned, unjustifiable hate speech. And you're perpetrating the exact same kind of hate with shameless lies and more hate speech. This shit has no place on this site. Get out.

I think you should look up the definition of hate speech.

You need to stop using hate speech.

"The gaming world is a cesspit of maladjusted, comically aggressive, emotionally (and maybe actually) adolescent males who have a deep fear and distrust of women. The problematic gamers are, naturally, almost exclusively male – and no doubt skew towards the young side. No-one’s surprised by that. I’m not surprised."

We have such members. We expect them to abide by our clearly written community standards. We are gamers. They are gamers. We act as a community, which involves not leaving everyone to fend for themselves as an individual.

"The gaming world is a cesspit of maladjusted, comically aggressive, emotionally (and maybe actually) adolescent males"

Sure, the preceding paragraph makes a pass at placing this in context, but this is clearly baiting language. And the problem is apparently so bad that OP doesn't want to even be called a gamer, lest he be lumped in with this cesspit.

Again. For the record. I am a gamer. I'm a lot of other things, too. But I'm a gamer, and so are my slightly maladjusted male and female compatriot guildmates.

The biggest problem I see here is parents letting children play M-rated games. Anecdotally, and with no facts whatsoever to support my theory, I believe this would remove 90% of the problem.

Judging by the comments in this thread, it's not a problem with parents letting children play video games. It's a very real problem with adult men.

I guess the point I was making is that there are a few toxic online communities, but a large majority are not anywhere near the cesspit the article describes. If you just avoid those it really isn't a problem (the games they center around really aren't that interesting anyways for most).

As I've gotten the opportunity to run some game events or moderate discussion, I have some thoughts about this.

Making a space positive and inclusive is not a magical process, but it means going a lot farther than telling victims to "ignore the noise." It requires the stakeholders to be proactive. They must consider how to moderate the space in such a way that minority voices are protected.

If this doesn't happen, by default, the loudest majority will command the framework and drain points of discussion into fallacious, self-serving thinking like the low-level insults that permeate most online games. It can happen in many ways, shapes and forms(whether the hotbutton is gender, sexuality, politics, race...), but this quality is true of every space I've observed.

> If the point of this article is to piss off the good guys, it's working. Now get the hell off my internet, because you're just as bad as the people sending you nasty messages.

Yeah the guy who's talking about the problem is JUST AS BAD as the people perpetrating the problem.

Worse.

Thanks for adding to the discussion! We value your input!

Nobody values yours. This entire thread is full of people shooting your nonsense down. Get a clue already.

My karma score from this thread begs to differ. I'm not here to convince people that my opinion is 100% right, I'm here to provide alternate viewpoints that might broaden someones perspective. All you appear to be doing is trolling.

You're here to lie. I caught you lying twice and exposed it both times. You're also spewing hate speech all over the place. Have some shame.

Hahahahaha

There's nothing funny about either your lies or your sexism. They're terrible. You're terrible.

Your karma score is irrelevant in a hugely biased community like HN, what matters are your arguments' validity, so far those are zero.

Everyone who has lurked and/or participated for a while here knows what kind of comments get praise and what kind incurs the wrath of the gods. Your viewpoints happen to resonate with many, without incurring the wrath of the demi-mods.

agreed

It's just words, just ignore him. You don't need to comment about it. Right?