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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

#241

Post by Torgo »

tonypace wrote: post #232
wutbrodo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how you interpreted Torgo's comment as worrying that inappropriate/extreme comments would be treated as an out-group. He/she said that he/she suspects that human-rating of comments would be based more on their (dis)agreement with the popular view (particularly on controversial topics) as opposed to the extremeness/inappropriateness of the content. There's a massive difference between a comment being 100%…

My point is that a comment filtering system is consciously based on the identification and exclusion of a group, which we'll call the out group. Of course it's limits will be debatable, just as the definition of spam is debatable. If what you're excluding is political speech of a sort, then someone is going to be able to accuse the system of censorship, no matter where the line is drawn. It's inherent in the system's…

I have just noticed that in many online communities, you couldn't easily filter on extremism because, based on the community values, expressing the wrong opinion is "trolling" but responding to that opinion "die in a fire you fucking asshole" is a top-rated comment. I don't even think these are outliers, a lot of communities are run like this.

Also, possibly this comment would be a false positive in some places because I included extreme text as an example.

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

#242

Post by Steko »

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.

If you were all ears you might have digested TFA instead of spinning it as men being the real victims.

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

#243

Post by shrnky »

cushychicken wrote: post #144
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 tha…

Unfortunately I have no choice but to deal with racist people from time time and am constantly repeating the phrase, "not all (insert race) people are like that."

Is that a "Red Herring?"

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

#244

Post by imgabe »

shrnky wrote: post #243
cushychicken wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 tha…

Unfortunately I have no choice but to deal with racist people from time time and am constantly repeating the phrase, "not all (insert race) people are like that." Is that a "Red Herring?"

I think that is almost exactly the opposite situation. You want to derail someone's racist diatribe, as whatever nonsense they're spouting is not a real problem that needs to be addressed.

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

#245

Post by gclaramunt »

byerley wrote: post #238
gclaramunt wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they're just outliers, they deserve the right to let their situation be known. You're pretty close to "you didn't communicate according to my standards, so I'm going to ignore you". How do you know your complaints about style aren't an excuse to avoid confronting the problem? Not saying you are, but for my part, even if they do it imperfectly, I will listen, I don't want my kids to grow up in world where this…

> How do you know your complaints about style aren't an excuse to avoid confronting the problem? Because I would have the same complaints regardless of the subject. Not all opinions deserve equal consideration and you have a burden of proof when trying to convince your reader of something. If anything, I gave this article more attention than I normally would have because I sincerely want properly condensed informatio…

> I want my children to understand perspective. You can't grieve for every individual injustice in the world, you can only strive to make it better overall.

Totally agree. I found the article helpful overall, I understand it must have been difficult to write it, so I'm giving it more leeway

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

#246

Post by seanflyon »

cheez wrote: post #69
sp332 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's not threatened because she's a writer, she's threatened because some people in the community are abusive and law enforcement hasn't stepped up and done its job.

She's a target of the threats because she's a public writer. It's not good and obviously it's not her fault, but sometimes it feels like a woman-in-tech's workday must go something like this according to the articles I see: 7am: coffee 8am: get to work 9am: rape threat from coworker #1 10am: standup meeting 11am: death threat from coworker #2

I think a big weakness of this article is that it goes from talking about horrible treats from random people to unconscious bias of coworkers without a clear transition. People skimming the article might think that she was getting threats from coworkers. The unconscious bias of developers and the toxicity of the gaming community are very different problems.

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

#247

Post by shrnky »

How does the Feminist movement square itself with the fact that many women actually like being prized for their beauty and sex appeal?

I'd like to start a campaign called "It's cool." It would require some form of an indicator. A sticker or button perhaps? Women who like having their beauty and/or sex appeal noticed could wear it on their person. Posters with these women could have it on display. Men would know, "It's cool" she likes that I appreciate her looks.

Would this satisfy the Feminists? Doubtful. More than likely these women would be attacked and ridiculed for what makes them happy.

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

#248

Post by seanflyon »

cyorir wrote: post #182
NotAtWork wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Applying filters hides the symptoms without treating the underlying illness, which is a society that is infested with sexism. This doesn't follow from the symptoms being cited, which is that a small subset of people say incredibly offensive and inappropriate things online. If a million people see a video, and 1% of the people respond, and 3% of the people responding are crazy, that's 300 crazy people responding. If…

My apologies, I phrased things poorly. I don't want to say a majority of society is bad. I just think that even a small contingent, if loud enough, can make society seem more toxic than it needs to be.

Wouldn't making it harder for that small toxic contingent to be heard improve the situation?

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

#249

Post by Zikes »

Steko wrote: post #242
Zikes wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you were all ears you might have digested TFA instead of spinning it as men being the real victims.

I'm not refuting that women are harassed, I'm taking offense at it being used as an excuse to disparage the male gender. That is no spin, that is calling out unacceptable behavior.

Please read the thread located here for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8070237

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

#250

Post by Gracana »

shrnky wrote: post #240
chiubaka wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, this absolutely goes two ways. And, honestly, I really do like pretty women. But it bothers me a lot that most of the advertisements I see for games on the web today feature almost nothing but scantily clad women with large bosoms. I want people to play games because they are amazing, because they have great concepts, and have been wonderfully executed. I don't want people to play games because they hav…

The men are usually represented in the same way. Muscular, Agile, etc.

But the men aren't presented that way because they're objects of sexual desire for the target audience, they're strong and tough and agile to fill the player's fantasy of power and control. Besides, the argument that men are portrayed the same way quickly breaks down when you compare male "functional" armor and female "sexy" armor, which is a common trope in a lot of games.
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