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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

#181

Post by chiubaka »

tomp wrote: post #118
chiubaka wrote: post #78

Wow, I'm really glad I read this. I'm making a video game myself right now, and this such a relevant issue that I never even thought about. It never occurred to me that women in the gaming industry were mistreated, but it kind of makes sense-- video games often cater to young males, and often the easiest way to cater to those young males is by over-sexualizing women. I'm not going to say that that strategy doesn't wo…

> I think the over-sexualization of women in games and in other places often makes men think with their penises instead of their brains. Why do you think so? Personally, I think it's the other way around - the cause is that people (not just men) respond better to "shallow" things - i.e. pretty things/landscapes/photos/people, which is why marketers/companies create things that are pretty. If your target audience is m…

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 have boobs in them.

This may or may not be an unattainable ideal, and certainly it would require change for both the advertisers and the target consumers.

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

#182

Post by cyorir »

NotAtWork wrote: post #159
cyorir wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Applying filters hides the symptoms without treating the underlying illness, which is a society that is infested with sexism. We can treat the symptoms by filtering but at the end of the day we need strategies for making society less sexist.

> 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.

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

#183

Post by dfxm12 »

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…

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

You don't need a resource. Do it yourself. Do it in situations where no one else will. This will encourage other to. This isn't an issue that's going to go away without grassroots support. There's no silver bullet, it's going to take work and unfortunately, time.

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

#184

Post by cheez »

tonypace wrote: post #178
cheez wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's not what she said. She described a number of situations. None of them involved coworkers at all. Where are you getting this from?

That's not what I said either. I said:

"sometimes it feels like a woman-in-tech's workday must go something like this according to the articles I see"

How was this article titled? It didn't say "online harassment of female authors in the gaming industry" which is what it is actually about. The title tried to lump in every woman in the gaming industry, a common tactic. So I get to make my own generalizations just as well as they do.

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

#186

Post by sp332 »

Zikes wrote: post #170
sp332 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I’ve personally never heard of a man in the games industry getting rape threats for having an opinion. > A male friend of mine that develops AAA games told me, "When a woman criticizes me, it goes to a different part of my brain than when a man on my team does. I get defensive really quickly. I’m trying to get better about it." I don’t think his is a unique experience. > We live in a society that’s sexist in ways i…

OK, actually, I agree with some of this. I didn't think labeling that behavior as "primal" was accurate or helpful. It's certainly social, and bound to be more or less strong depending on the person and situation. Calling it primal is defeatist, plus it assumes that men have to fight against their base nature to be decent people.

On the other hand, I don't think the article says men don't get rape threats, just that they're rare. Also I think society really doesn't understand how sexist it is.

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

#187

Post by therogerwilco »

I get harassed everyday. Because of all the stereotypical things in our lives today it's quite horrible. If it's not bad enough I'm white, and all the crap that goes along with just saying that, now I must be strong.

Because when people hear I'm a man, they always assume things.

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

#188

Post by cyorir »

autokad wrote: post #153
cyorir wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Applying filters hides the symptoms without treating the underlying illness, which is a society that is infested with sexism. We can treat the symptoms by filtering but at the end of the day we need strategies for making society less sexist.

get over yourself. you should see the things people say to me in facebook chess let alone playing starcraft. its not because im a male or female, its because people are assholes but we dont need some sort of mind police to 'solve the problem'.

Where do I argue in favor of mind police? Don't put words in my mouth for me, thank you. I look at how attitudes towards things like race have changed in the past 50 years. That is not a result of regulation imposed on society, that is a result of changing attitudes and culture in society. IMHO the same thing ought to happen with respects to sexism, we should hope that the attitudes and culture of society as a whole begin to shift.

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

#190

Post by im3w1l »

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.
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