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No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

polygon.com

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Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#141

Post by Torgo »

NotAtWork wrote: post #112

I always find it very strange that we don't apply spam filters and recent machine learning techniques to the problem of filtering comments. If I looked at my email unfiltered, I'd think one in three of the people sending me messages in the past day were unusually concerned about the state of my penis. From a not-adding-anything-to-the-discussion perspective, dead baby pictures and random threats of rape or acts of vi…

I would love to see an analysis on a site by site basis of what they consider trolls and what they consider highly-rated comments. I suspect however it would be found it would align more closely around in-group/out-group than content.

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#142

Post by avz »

Geekette wrote: post #126
jarin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably because there are also plenty of excellent reasons to have anonymity as an option online.

Oh, I absolutely agree there are. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough: these types of harassment makes me willing to forgo the legitimate opportunities for anonymity, just to be able to be able to have an environment where such harassment is minimized and traceable when it does happen. It might seem extreme, but when you've been on the receiving end of numerous vile messages a day, including rape/death threa…

> [...] makes me willing to forgo the legitimate opportunities for anonymity, just to be able [...]

[emphasis added]

Yes. You're willing to forgo anonymity. Now ask the others.

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#143

Post by iandanforth »

I support and applaud the author. I will offer one negative reaction so that if others wish to avoid this reaction, or preempt it, they will be aware.

Throughout the article I was looking for actionable suggestions, at the end I was told that "Listening" was key. This plays directly into my stereotypes. In other words, I was not surprised. The article had less impact because it failed to offer a memorable and surprising suggestion to conclude.

Finally to avoid hypocrisy, I will offer an actionable suggestion. Create or coopt a new label for such men and allow people who support you to disassociate themselves from that group. For example "Alphas". Men who are pre-release technology. Incomplete specimens. And dually, men who imagine being big and strong and loud and dominant is what matters. I hate Alpha types.

So f*ck Alphas and everything they stand for.

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#144

Post by cushychicken »

imgabe wrote: post #100

> We live in a society that’s sexist in ways it doesn’t understand. One of the consequences is that men are extremely sensitive to being criticized by women. I think it threatens them in a very primal way, and male privilege makes them feel free to lash out. I don't mean to "Not all men" this, but I wish we would stop treating behavior like this as a normal part of the male psyche. It's not. It's seriously disturbed.…

>I hate to "Not all men" this, but I wish we would stop treating behavior like this as a normal part of the male psyche. It's not. It's seriously disturbed.

I think that realization is the very opposite of the "Not all men" mindset. Saying "Not all men are like that" is a red herring - it's a way of distracting yourself from the fact that there are people out there who treat women like dirt by saying you don't do that.

I think where we're failing as a society is the inability to close the loop and turn "not all men" into "yo dude, not cool" - we don't seem to be very good at getting men to call out sexism in other men.

I would love some kind of resource for how to do that effectively.

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#145

Post by eggbrain »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #134
eggbrain wrote: post #122

We need to fix this. Whenever someone feels like they are in a position of power, things like this happen. This power can come from anonymity (eg: the internet), it can come from a position of authority (boss), or sometimes it can come from just being dominated by an in-group with a much smaller out-group. What's happening here seems like a mix of the power of anonymity on the internet mixed with the fact that women…

what if those filters also watched for hate words? I'd love to know what a "hate word" entails. Sounds like it would gratuitously bring down all negative opinions, including ones that aren't hurtful. Especially since you give the word "hate" itself as an example, which is ludicrous.

Again, I'm not saying it's a perfect solution. Perhaps a naive bayes classifier, with enough examples, could distinguish between negative opinions and hate speech. Maybe it couldn't -- it might be very similar to trying to create a sarcasm detector[1]. I'm hopeful to just get the ball rolling in terms of discussions -- even if I'm wrong, we are at least talking about ways to try to fix the problem.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27711109

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#146

Post by eli »

cheez wrote: post #90
eli wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tease what apart?

An anonymous woman in tech is not the same as a woman publicly writing about her perspective on women in tech. Change "woman in tech" to something like support for/against gay marriage. I may have my own opinion, but once I voice it, I'm a target.

I don't think I agree with your premise, but even if I did... what's the point you're trying to make? That women would be safer if they never voice an opinion?

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#147

Post by Zikes »

arrrg wrote: post #124
Zikes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypocrisy is saying men should not tell women how to feel, and then following that up with an entire article telling men how to feel and behave. Pretty sure I didn't imagine that.

I don’t think you quite understood what that article was talking about … you seem quite confused. I’m sorry.

If I seem confused to you, that is a failing on both our parts. Let's take a moment to correct that.

On the issue of the author's hypocrisy, I have clearly stated the contradictions in the article which satisfy the definition of the term. I don't think there is any confusion on that and after another read I don't think my comments on that point specifically could lead you to believe I'm confused about that issue.

So, what is it exactly that makes you think I'm confused? Was it anything in particular that I've said, or perhaps since you think I don't understand the article as a whole, do you think I'm making the wrong points entirely?

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#148

Post by alexqgb »

s1300045 wrote: post #119

It is sort of related. It's a rant. I have many friends in the STEM field, or friends I play video games with. And I simply cannot introduce them to any of my females friends, or any friends from different social circles for that matter. They are a special breed of people, brilliant and quick, and they are also egotistic and mean. They are very quick to make jokes of your mistakes or shortcoming. The way they pry and…

There's a name for people like that: assholes.

There's also a lot of insecurity going on there, but that's true of most people. The difference is in how we deal with it. Some people do so by trying to become kinder and more decent people, which has an amazing effect on your own level of social comfort. Others try to bring the people who threaten them down to their level (or beneath, if possible). Oddly enough, this strategy does not improve the underlying level of social ease.

Quite the opposite. I mean, these are people (a) who act like assholes specifically to (b) lower those around them so they don't have to (c) do the hard work of making themselves better. It's a triple play of shitty behavior stemming from a toxic combination of fear and laziness on one hand, combined with sickening disregard for others.

The result is clear. You don't introduce them to others. In other words, you specifically and deliberately limit their social horizons, having (correctly) judged them as unfit for decent company.

This could be an addressable problem if the people in question had a baseline of personal integrity. But as you noted, they can also be willfully ignorant when convenient. Aside from being intellectually dishonest (which is maddening in its own right), it's also a major barrier to personal development. Self-reinforcing assholedom, essentially.

So, uh, maybe you need other friends?

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#149

Post by NotAtWork »

eli wrote: post #128
NotAtWork wrote: post #112

I always find it very strange that we don't apply spam filters and recent machine learning techniques to the problem of filtering comments. If I looked at my email unfiltered, I'd think one in three of the people sending me messages in the past day were unusually concerned about the state of my penis. From a not-adding-anything-to-the-discussion perspective, dead baby pictures and random threats of rape or acts of vi…

Maybe there's some value there, but my experience is that you can rarely solve a "people" problem with a purely technical solution. Also, as a society, I'd like to think we can do better than "sorry about the rape/murder threats, we'll try to hide most of them from you"

Changing the incentives of a situation, such as raising the effort required to get a harassing message through the filters, isn't a "purely technical solution" any more than most economics strategies are.

I'd argue it's making use of technology to make a people oriented solution: people do less of things that are harder to do, and seeing less garbage even if you still see some makes the place seem more pleasant.

> I'd like to think we can do better than "sorry about the rape/murder threats, we'll try to hide most of them from you"

The best we can ever do, without swerving way out in to super repressive regimes, is impact the rate at which it happens, the response of other people, etc and not that it happens at all.

Re: No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry

#150

Post by sp332 »

Zikes wrote: post #133
Steko wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I wrong that this would have been the top upvoted comment on HN 5 years ago? If so maybe that counts as a tiny bit of progress/small strides. Or maybe this will be the top voted when I come back later, /sigh...

If you disagree with any of the points I've made, I'm all ears. I did not make that comment in some lame attempt to troll or stir up controversy. I have presented my case against using the harassment of women in gaming as an excuse to target and harass the male demographic, and I'm willing to discuss it further with anyone that's interested.

As a male, I didn't feel targeted by the article. I don't think the article was anti-men, it was just pro-women which is not the same thing. In fact, I'm having a hard time thinking what kind of harassment I could get as a result of the article.
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