Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

polygon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 375 posts

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

#251

Post by Rudism »

Zikes wrote: post #67
lukasb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretend for the moment we're in some crazy mirror world where women are frequently mistreated, in ways that many well-meaning men don't see. In this world, it makes sense for a woman to lecture those well-meaning men about empathy - to ask them not to tell women what to feel - because they're just missing some basic information.

Pretend for a moment we're in some crazy mirror world where whites are frequently mistreated, in ways that many well-meaning blacks don't see. In this world, it makes sense for a white to lecture those well-meaning blacks about empathy - to ask them not to tell whites how to feel - because they're just missing some basic information. No, wait, that would be racist. But your version magically is not sexist? Edit: To t…

I think you're being downvoted because you may have misunderstood the parent comment and replied with an analogy that makes no sense.

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

#252

Post by ThomPete »

Gracana wrote: post #250
shrnky wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I worked in advertising for a number of years. Men are presented primarily in one of 4 ways.

1) Handsome 2) Stupid 3) Authority 4) Bro

Men are presented as objects just as women are, that is how you sell in 20 seconds.

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

#253

Post by Fomite »

wutbrodo wrote: post #236
Fomite wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An attempt at a more useful response than logfromblammo's "because feminism" answer. There's a couple things that probably rate a down vote in some people's minds: - "I would never think of them as brilliant or accomplished (even though I know they are) because they do something I have no idea about. Just the same when I saw worlds best CEO, lawyer, window cleaner, bus driver, mercenary or whoever. I have no idea and…

> b. Especially problematic as writing off management, HR and other "soft" fields as not as important as engineering is a common way to sideline the women who do make it into tech companies, as they are somewhat more common in those areas. This is a blatant twisting of his words. Women are even less represented in tech management than they are in other tech roles, and throwing in a few roles that he didn't mention at…

Higher level management, yes, they are. But it's fairly common to track women into middle management roles because they're "good with people" - and then write them off as not being engineers. There have been posts about that on HN not all that infrequently.

And hell, even if you don't want to consider that, it's not a blatant twisting of his words. She's the CEO of Yahoo. That's not a "waste of a good brain".

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

#254

Post by legulere »

cheez wrote: post #17

> I lead a development studio that makes games. Sometimes, I write about issues in the games industry that relate to the equality of women. My reward is that I regularly have men threatening to rape and commit acts of violence against me. My suspicion is that she is not threatened because she leads a development studio, but because she is a writer. She's not asking for it, but she is making herself a public figure an…

Obviously you get more threads if you're a writer or even a journalist. Journalists get pretty extreme hate mail all the time.

But that's not what this article is about. It's about how it is different from what men get and about how it is more than what men get. You won't get the same reaction from writing a blog post as a man as what's described in this article.

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

#255

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

im3w1l wrote: post #190
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…

I'd argue it's the opposite. The people send threats because they feel they have no power, no other recourse to take. It is a last ditch effort to change something. Upvoted ya btw, because you don't deserve to be downvoted.

To change what, exactly?

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

#256

Post by hackuser »

ThomPete wrote: post #252
Gracana wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I worked in advertising for a number of years. Men are presented primarily in one of 4 ways. 1) Handsome 2) Stupid 3) Authority 4) Bro Men are presented as objects just as women are, that is how you sell in 20 seconds.

> Men are presented as objects just as women are, that is how you sell in 20 seconds.

It's not the same, because women are politically/socially much more vulnerable. If you are one woman in an office of 10 men, one of the men objectifying you is a threat, but not vice-versa. If you are blue in a world run by green people, constant advertisements objectifying blue people is threatening, but not those objectifying green.

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

#257

Post by admyral »

caio1982 wrote: post #127

Despite the actual point of this article, I'm really happy to see the frequency of posts from many writers at Polygon/The Verge about sexism and related issued in the gaming industry and game development. I'd guess and say they publish at least one or two articles on the topic per week, and all of them are fantastic. To whomever at Polygon/The Verge that decided to go on this editorial route, thousands of kudos.

There has been a consistent onslaught of articles by the same cabal of the authors about sexism in the gaming industry. All of them include anecdotal evidence that rampant sexism exists and how terrible it is, but offering little concrete evidence proving the problem is getting worse. From the article "Things aren’t getting better for women on the internet; they’re deteriorating." By what measurement? Could it be because there now more prominent women on the Internet, or because the problem is actually getting worse? Is the expectation that the Internet becomes the one and only bastion of humanity where sexism doesn't exist?

I question whether this problem is so pervasive that the authors and editors feel readers need to be consistently bombarded with it, or whether the position is so salacious and instantly defensible that authors and editors have learned they can benefit from the attention the topic receives.

Perhaps I'm just bitter because I was just banned from Polygon for expressing this very perspective.

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

#258

Post by oldmanjay »

Fomite wrote: post #220
oldmanjay wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly my downvoters have never been insulted while suicidal

Or, more likely, believe that any circumstance where being called fat or dorky is a serious threat to your well being will also be a circumstance where people musing about your rape and death will be a serious threat to your well being. Especially as, for women, body shaming and rape threats often come hand in hand.

I'm sorry, what do threats have to do with insults? Conflating the two is a classic technique in this strange attempt to create some sort of right to never be offended, but they have no relationship to each other at all.

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

#259

Post by jev »

enraged_camel wrote: post #200
tomp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, for most things that you wrote, one could say the exact opposite, with equivalent validity. > You are making this comparison because you haven't fully thought things through. In your mind, death is worse than rape, but it doesn't automatically follow that receiving death threats is worse than receiving rape threats. But it's not so simple. > Death threats are significantly worse than rape threats, for a simila…

You seem to be missing the important part, where we are comparing death threats made against adult male sports players and rape threats made against women. Death threats against players are made as a way of voicing displeasure with the player's performance or the result of the game. The intent is to air frustration. Since competitive sports themselves are a way of bringing out the human primal side, being the target…

How many people would be offended at the statement "white people can't see the colour purple"? Very few, I'd imagine, because it's patently ridiculous.

If you imply that women are inferior though, the statement has to be vigorously opposed. Imply that feminism isn't necessary, and the tumblr and twitter brigades will come out to shame and silence you, until you agree that women have it harder.

It's absurd behaviour for a group of people who supposedly believe women are equally capable as men. Once you figure this out, feminism makes a lot more sense. When they can blame men, they blame men. When fairness requires them to blame women, they blame 'society'.

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

#260

Post by mperd »

ThomPete wrote: post #252
Gracana wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I worked in advertising for a number of years. Men are presented primarily in one of 4 ways. 1) Handsome 2) Stupid 3) Authority 4) Bro Men are presented as objects just as women are, that is how you sell in 20 seconds.

If you consider an object as something to be acted upon, of the 4 ways of representation you cited, only the first usually applies. Other ways of representation, in the examples I can think of, are often of active characters, either the corporate alpha male, or the frat-house bro. Sure, these are simplifications and stereotypes of men, but I don't think they can compare to the objectification of women through their sexuality, as portrayed through our mass media. Men act, women are acted upon.
Post reply on HN