I'm tired

> she gets rape threats every game release

seriously, the internet is a big rape threat. are there any smart people that treat random anon trolling seriously? (except opportunists and journalists that by occasion use such crap as a 'proof' of whatever)

> Defenses and arguments tried to be brought up, but conversation quickly moved on with the men talking over the woman until she just sat there quietly and resigned.

Hmm. Why haven't I seen a single woman post an article about this issue? I'm tired of all the me-tooism from men about this subject. Yes, sexism is abhorrent fallacy, but inverse-sexism is still sorta sexism -- enough with the White Knights, already.

Not to defend the guy who made some joke about tits, but I look forward to the day when we can be more than humorless automatons regarding this issue. Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgqUQ17sYm0

I'm not saying getting the offender banned from GDC should be the only action, by all means confront the offender too. But you can't expect people to be able to, or feel safe in, confronting someone who has already shown a disregard for their agency.

In an ideal world, it'd go something like this:

    Hear ugly -> confront offender -> extract apology -> inform others

But of course, for a large number of people it'll be more like this:

    Hear ugly -> ensure safety of ones self and others -> inform others

Merely confronting the asshat is great until you discover the asshat in question is just doing this again and again and saying sorry as if that makes their original transgression alright. There needs to be something the offending party can lose for it to make sense, especially when the potential reputation loss isn't in the circles they care about anyway.

And in one respect, making a change isn't my first priority. My first priority is making these places a safe place for people to be. Making the people who would otherwise make this an unsafe space rethink their actions is a secondary goal.

There is a website http://notalwaysright.com/

It's an aggregation of stories from people working in the service industry who have horror stories to tell from the customers they serviced. If you read through a few stories you might pick up on a anomaly that seems to pervade. Particularly any story from the "Awesome Customers" category.

For some stories we see normal, self-righteous, mildly ignorant, comical behavior, typical of human beings in general I would say. Other stories have this strange, caricature, like quality about them. People come off like comic book villains, cackling maniacally as they monologue about how demographic X is inferior in way Y. They say statements which are way beyond the pale of current society, and in these stories one brave individual stands against their unwavering ignorance in a triumphant display, shaming the villain.

I think you'll pick up on it as well. These stories are fantasies. Spirited teenagers imagining themselves slaying the ignorance and wrong-doings of their bigoted elders, and reporting it as if it actually happened for the mass approval of people on Facebook.

This story has such a quality about it.

93 points and counting.

Why is informing others necessary? You dealt with the problem, give the person a chance to change. If they're a repeat offender, eventually they'll piss off enough people that the overlapping social networks will catch wind of it organically. There's no reason to broadcast, make a list, or "save the world" by putting a face out there as someone to avoid.

I see the safety argument making an appearance here yet again, even though neither Adria nor the woman in this story were in any danger from the person (as far as I can tell). If you think jokes make PyCon or GDC an unsafe place, I'm sure everyone who's ever been sexually assaulted would like a word with you about what 'safe' means. It's making the assumption that people who joke inappropriately will eventually be rapists, and we should therefore warn everyone to stay away from them, which is fundamentally flawed.

Just deal with it in person. If he's a repeat, eventually it'll catch up with him enough. Of course, there's no saying something this controversial without geek feminists trotting out the "you're just shutting up the victim" line, which is complete hogwash. I've been called a rape apologist for making the point about dealing with something privately. People do change, even in the extreme scenarios, and the age of rapid social media and Internet communication demands ever higher vigilance over our actions online.

There are two outcomes, if we extrapolate this to the ends: we shame someone publicly and effectively destroy a career, eliminating any possibility of improvement as a human being and the contributions that person might have brought to the table, or we deal with it in person and attempt to steer him toward the right path. The default tendency to feel hopeless about fixing something is swaying this choice the wrong way.