

The Terrible Misogyny in the Games Industry - renownedmedia
http://nastythingssaidabout.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/the-terrible-misogyny-in-the-games-industry/

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omgtehblackbloc
If you tweet to your enemy "I'm gonna use my orbital laser to incinerate you
from space, so that you're wiped clean off the map!" Your enemy will not be
actually, literally scared. Because your threat is obviously imaginary. You do
not have a space laser, and anyway few people have ever been incinerated by
space lasers at all.

If you tweet to your enemy "I'm gonna toss a molotov through your window while
you sleep, so that you and your family are cooked alive", they might be
legitimately scared. Because that threat is not obviously imaginary. It could
feasibly happen, and it is exactly the kind of thing that has been done by
hate groups before.

So a threat only becomes a Threat when, in context, it's sufficiently
plausible.

That context is key. The plausibility of a threat changes based on who makes
the threat, and whom they threaten. If a misogynistic troll on the internet
says that he's going to rape me (a man), I can pretty easily laugh it off. I
feel safe in assuming the troll is a hetero-male, and therefore probably has
little interest in actually raping me, and besides there's relatively little
precedent for guys like me being stalked and raped by weirdos.

If the troll says the same thing to a woman, it's interpreted differently.
Very many women are raped in our society, it is a constant real fear. And it's
not at all unbelievable that a weirdo might seek to stalk and rape a woman
he's become obsessed with. Rare, sure. But real enough to be scary.

Point being, yes both men and women are threatened with rape. But while to men
it's obviously just an especially colorful way of expressing hatred, to women
it can constitute a real and serious threat.

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mbleigh
This post sets up and knocks down a strawman quite expertly. You're right,
it's not just Anita Sarkeesian who gets death threats, threats of rape, etc.
leveled at her by idiot troll gamers. That's gaming's culture of harassment
and embarrassing childishness due to anonymity.

What the author conveniently ignores is that while Jack Thompson woke the
gamer troll machine by being a living caricature of game-hatred, Anita
Sarkeesian invites the same wrath by creating level-headed, well-researched
videos whose only "incendiary" call to action is for the creators of games to
be more thoughtful and inclusive in their use of female characters in video
games.

The misogyny isn't in the harassment itself, it's in why the harassment is
occurring.

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ekianjo
> All these horrible comments, just because she’s a woman

Huh ? Are you kidding me ? She's not just nobody. She's a feminist, who is
very vocal about her opinions, has tons of viewers, and obviously have very
polarizing opinions about video games and the place of women/girls in it.

Claiming she's "just a woman" is ridiculous. When you expose yourself, become
popular and have lame opinions about some stuff (yeah, obviously I think most
of what she talks about is BS), of course you will get a certain number of
people who are violently opposed to you, and not just because of your gender.

It's like saying "people don't like Phil Fish and want to murder him just
because they are jealous" or something.

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lvh
I don't believe that that ("because she's a woman") was the author's thesis.
He is representing what they believe is someone else's thesis: that this is
what you get for just being a woman in games.

(Did you read the rest of the article? I don't think you could reasonably
believe this was the author's thesis, reading the rest of the article.)

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BenFrancis2
All this link proves is that 'gamers' treat everyone who threatens their
childish world-view with childish responses.

Nothing has changed. Gamer still equals douchebag, crybaby man-child.

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Cuuugi
or, you don't know what you're talking about and don't care. Which is fine,
but wasting everyones time stereotyping (according to this article) 378
million people is not. Condescesion can easily be construed as childish, so
grow up.

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BenFrancis2
I've been playing games since 1885 when I got my first home computer, and
Apple IIe. Don't mistake my words as condescension; it's disgust and anger at
the revolting behavior of these 'gamers' and embarrassment that I (and other
decent human beings) am in some way involved with them.

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CmonDev
The misandry is a much bigger problem:

[http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-
bubble.h...](http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html)

~~~
lvh
Did you read the article, or respond to the title?

