
Male status and performance moderates female-directed behaviours (2015) - robin_reala
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0131613
======
sctb
All: we've turned off a few of the flags on this article because the
discussion so far has not reached the 7th circle of hell. If you're going to
comment here, please do so slowly, thoughtfully and make it civil and
substantive.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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ghostbrainalpha
I assume the game they were testing was "Overwatch".

I recently saw some compilations posted by female streamers of the abuse they
receive. It was pretty scary, and the community is uniquely aggressive for
some reason.

I am a particularly bad player myself. I actually quit playing with strangers
because the abuse made the game not fun, and I am a male.

In my experience low skill players receive an equal amount of harassment, but
where I was being called The "N" Word, homosexual slurs, and just told to kill
myself, women were given extremely detailed descriptions of how they would be
raped, murdered and even cannibalized.

The stuff children think it is acceptable to say to a women anonymously is
INSANE. And we have no way of reporting someone for being the next Harvey
Weinstien or even Ted Bundy and getting them reliably removed from the game.

~~~
mftf
They are words. Not bullets, not fists, not gropes. And the fact that there is
such a movement to sensationalize what should be harmless to any well adjusted
person only encourages the trolls.

This is fundamentally different from in person harassment or bullying. These
things dont happen in every round, far from it, and there is nothing stopping
people from muting microphones and/or leaving toxic games.

There is no line to be drawn here. Offense is taken, not given. The first line
of defense should be to teach people to ignore trolls, as this is the only
realistic way to get rid of them. You can't go around arresting 10 year olds
for whatever you happen to consider offensive.

>next Harvey Weinstien or even Ted Bundy

That is some extreme paranoia. People online say these things fundamentally
because they _know_ that others will find them unacceptable. By crying out
over something so innocuous, you encourage the behavior.

Edit: I'd also like to add, we are complaining about bad words in games that
simulate killing, murder, and war. Is that consistent, or rational?

~~~
FiveDegrees
Sorry, what?

Even the supreme court of the United States of 'but muh free speech' America
has struck down the notion of threats of violence being a form of protected
speech.

Also, where in sweet jesus do you come from that threats of horrific violence
--anything short of aggravated assault--is COMPLETELY above-board?

If you use this language with your coworkers, you are liable to be fired. If
you use this language with your subordinates, you are liable to be fired and
charged with harassment. If you use this language to a server at a restaurant,
you are liable to be expelled from the property.

Notably, if you use this language on Hacker News, your account will get thrown
directly into the Sun.

This language is not tolerable, and it is absolutely not harmless (want
citations?).

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RightMillennial
In my experience playing Halo (maybe it was Halo 2) 15 or so years ago was
that there's a subset of teenagers who shit talk for the sake of it and
they'll use whatever language is most likely to offend. Sex (and race) didn't
have much to due with it other than to expand the offensive word bank. That
being said, the analysis done in the paper is very intriguing.

~~~
ubernostrum
If you believe there's not a gendered component, and that it's just generic
bullying by some "subset" of "teenagers", then I invite you to just read the
replies on Twitter to women who speak out about, say, diversity in tech.

Or start moderating a forum. I mod a couple of subreddits, and from _that_
experience it is literally impossible for me to believe that you are correct.

~~~
nitwit005
Occasionally you'll see online harassment shift once they have something they
perceive as more damaging to use. Example I saw in the past was all the
harassment shifted to mockery about dead child after son died.

I'm afraid that, at least some of the time, people are just trying to be as
hurtful as possible. The sexism and rape comments are often just what they
think is most hurtful.

~~~
ubernostrum
Again, it's not an "everybody gets bullied, it's just a choice of what words".
It's a "women definitely and measurably get targeted more often, and subjected
to far harsher treatment, than men".

If you can't work this out from publicly-available evidence on social media,
I'm not really sure what to say to you.

~~~
belorn
This kind of rhetoric is why we can't have civil discussions on this topic and
why articles like this get flagged. Just concluding that "I think X is obvious
and if you disagree then we have nothing further to discuss" will just result
lose-lose situation for everyone.

There has been games built on the idea of trolling. I have personally been in
a guild where the distinction between "just a choice of what words" and "they
really mean it" resulted in a person being expelled from the group. The
concept is fairly well established, but the effect isn't. This article gives
additional data but the interpretation is up for discussion.

For example, do the data say that female players are treated worse by poor
performing males, or do poor performing males act more submissive towards high
performing males? The article do take a very biological view of the problem,
so maybe we should compare the findings with studies done in nature on how
animal use displaced aggression. About 80% of aggression in Baboons are are
displaced aggression, normally done by a high ranking male having a setback
and then go and attacking a low ranking male as form of stress management. If
I recall right, the lowest ranking males don't have anyone else to displace
the aggression so go after low ranking females instead.

~~~
ubernostrum
_This kind of rhetoric is why we can 't have civil discussions on this topic
and why articles like this get flagged._

No, the reason why we can't have civil discussions is mostly that the same
sorts of people who _commit_ disgusting gendered harassment also feel a need
to deny that they do so (and that anyone else does so), and attempt to nit-
pick apart anyone who asserts a patently obvious fact about our society.

There's not really room for debate on "is gendered harassment of women, as a
qualitatively distinct thing from generic bullying, a real thing that exists".

~~~
belorn
You will then continue to see articles like this getting flagged. Either one
accept that other people may have a different views, or civil discussions
breaks down and you get a polarized society such as current political climate.

Also, don't accuse people of _committing_ gendered harassment with nothing to
support it. This is exactly the 7th circle of hell comments that sctb mentions
above. Just because some disagree with you it don't mean they are racist,
sexist, or spawn of Satan. Name calling is just an other form of harassment.

Just because homophobic comments are mostly directed at male players don't
make homophobia a "gendered harassment of men, as a qualitatively distinct
thing from generic bullying". People are allowed to a different view if
something is a gendered harassment of women, gendered harassment of men, and
what the cause of it. The use of facts and supportive statements is how civil
discussion handles it.

~~~
ubernostrum
_Either one accept that other people may have a different views_

People are entitled to their own views, but not to their own facts. Denial of
facts that can be openly verified by any person is clear and convincing
evidence of bad faith, and I have no rhetorical obligation to be charitable to
someone who does so.

When you can acknowledge verifiable reality, though, perhaps we can discuss
it.

------
Udik
There's something that doesn't sound convincing to me. The study proposes that

> Low-status males that have the most to lose due to a hierarchical
> reconfiguration are responding to the threat female competitors pose.

This seems to imply that females are seen as competitors in a male hierarchy.
But competitors for what, exactly? Male hierarchies establish a dominance
scale, and as the study recalls:

> Even in modern day society, dominance and not attractiveness is associated
> with college _male_ mating success

(italics mine)

So the position in a male hierarchy largely influences male mating success.
What does the position of women in the same hierarchy influence? Even if it
improved mating success (and this is debatable), it would improve mating
success _with men_ , that is, partners the other males are not interested in.
In other words, for a male only the position in the _male_ hierarchy should be
relevant, not the position in a global hierarchy.

On the other end, competition should be fierce _among males_ as it's strictly
the male hierarchy that determines mating opportunities. But this is at odds
one of the results of the study, that women are the target of most abuse while
interactions among males are much more guarded.

~~~
Toast_25
I believe it's because if a low status male is below in the hierarchy to
someone they're trying to impress by being high in the hierarchy it makes them
look bad.

I don't believe the point the researchers are trying to make is that low-
status men could be lashing out because they're afraid women could beat them
in the mating arena, but because women higher in the hierarchy could make them
lose.

~~~
observation
Is that what has happened in polygamist groups?

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mftf
Why does HN allow articles like this to be posted if it suppresses any
arguments against their validity or premise?

This entire topic is flamebait, except only critical arguments are punished.

This is dangerous, because it creates a false appearance of consensus.
Further, without allowing for healthy skepticism, we practice something more
akin to religion than science.

~~~
sctb
I'm not sure I understand who you're referring to as "HN" or what you're
referring to as suppression? If you'd like to discuss further, we'd be happy
if you emailed us at hn@ycombinator.com.

------
colanderman
I've seen it hypothesized elsewhere that lower-class racism is largely a
product of fear of displacement in the social hierarchy by minorities. I
wonder if the same mechanisms are at work.

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dominotw
>To test this hypothesis, we used an online first-person shooter video game
that removes signals of dominance but provides information on gender,
individual performance, and skill.

What are "signals of dominance"

~~~
Toast_25
I suggest you read the study, that is explained under the 'Videogame Used'
section. The second paragraph.

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Boothroid
Be interesting to reverse the scenario - what happens when a man enters an all
female arena and threatens the hierarchy? In my experience women are just as
capable of banding together to ostracise an outsider.

~~~
mrxd
What do you mean by “just as capable”? This research studied a case where men
did not band together, but that low status men behaved differently from high
status men.

~~~
Boothroid
Fair enough, my language was a little careless.

The finding is interesting, but wouldn't it be more interesting still if they
had performed the same study with the sexes reversed also? We would then know
for definite if there is a sex difference in behaviour. As it is we don't
know. Women are just as capable of bad behaviour as men, and to think
otherwise is to subscribe to the sugar and spice and all things nice school of
sexism.

Also, imagine substituting men and women for black and white, or jew/non-jew,
etc. I suspect the ethics board might be asking questions.

~~~
mrxd
What I took from this study is not that men are bad, but that bad behavior
towards women is ultimately caused by male dominance hierarchies. It suggests
that the best way to reduce hostility to women is by eliminating those
hierarchies rather than just stigmatizing men in general.

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funkjunky
I know it isn't supposed to be, but this is the funniest thing I've read all
week

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive dismissals to HN, especially not on known
flamewar territory. Comments like this one degrade the site and add to the
risk of serious damage.

