
No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry - smacktoward
http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harassment
======
Zikes
This is the sort of journalism I would expect to find on Jezebel, rather than
Polygon.

Filled with us vs. them mentality: no man can understand, men all think this,
men always tell us that. Men never deal with harassment, death threats, or
rape threats. Well, here's a little variation on Hitchens' Razor: what can be
proven with anecdotal evidence can be dismissed with anecdotal evidence.

[http://www.edge-online.com/features/toxic-games-community-
co...](http://www.edge-online.com/features/toxic-games-community-could-drive-
developers-to-suicide-warns-adam-orth/)

[http://i.imgur.com/HBxSZBF.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/HBxSZBF.jpg)

The worst of it is, one paragraph opens with "Women in the industry are told
by men what is valid for us to feel." and only a scant few paragraphs later is
an entire article written by a woman telling men how they should act and feel.
Part of which is "so great" that it deserved to be made into an "inspirational
poster". Everyone thinks what they have to say is inherently valuable, I'm
pretty sure that's a major component of the human condition.

~~~
Steko
Am I wrong that this would have been the top upvoted comment on HN 5 years
ago? If so maybe that counts as a tiny bit of progress/small strides. Or maybe
this will be the top voted when I come back later, /sigh...

~~~
Zikes
If you disagree with any of the points I've made, I'm all ears.

I did not make that comment in some lame attempt to troll or stir up
controversy. I have presented my case against using the harassment of women in
gaming as an excuse to target and harass the male demographic, and I'm willing
to discuss it further with anyone that's interested.

~~~
sp332
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.

~~~
Zikes
> 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 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 know how anyone, male or female, could read that excerpt and not be
offended.

First, it starts out by basically asserting the premise that men do not get
rape threats.

Second, it quotes one man as saying he reacts viscerally to criticisms from
women and then asserts that this is typical behavior for men.

Third, it says society is sexist in ways it doesn't understand, asserts men
are extremely sensitive to criticism from women, and then calls them primal
and invokes male privilege.

This is hashtag feminism as its worst. It's building flimsy pretexts on top of
anecdotal evidence, and hiding it in an article about harassment women face in
an attempt to lend it some sort of legitimacy. It's as bad as the "think of
the children!" excuses used to pass laws, and just as insidious because it is
automatically above reproach in exactly the same way. It's clearly
demonstrated right here in the way any comment at all that disagrees with the
author is immediately set upon with downvotes, rather than reasonable
discourse.

~~~
sp332
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.

~~~
Zikes
> Also I think society really doesn't understand how sexist it is.

Oh I absolutely agree with you there. This article is largely sexist against
men, but few people are willing to admit it because it's buried in a
legitimate rant about sexism against women.

~~~
ahris
This writer has had negative experiences in the game industry due to her
gender and is hoping to change that. She is not placing blame on _all_ males.
She is merely relating her personal experience where there happens to be a
correlation between the negativity and males. Maybe you're reading the tone
incorrectly. Her writing is pretty abrasive.

~~~
Zikes
I don't think you've read any of the previous comments in this thread. If
you'll go back up to this[1] comment you'll see that "tone" has as much to do
with this argument as the brand of laptop she used to write the article in the
first place.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8070340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8070340)

------
chiubaka
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 work on me (I am, myself, a
young male), but I am going to say that I don't think it's right for games and
other media to capitalize so heavily on that. I think the over-sexualization
of women in games and in other places often makes men think with their penises
instead of their brains. They say and do stupid things that they really never
should. It's inexcusable, and it's a two-way street: men should know better,
and mass media shouldn't be encouraging that kind of thinking. I also don't
think it's right that someone who just wants to follow their dreams in the
gaming industry (or really any industry) should ever experience what any of
the case studies in this article experienced.

I'm not sure what I can do to help here, but if I find a way, I hope I can!
Right now I'm working on a gaming startup with a couple of my best friends
and, at the very least, we have made a commitment to ourselves to never resort
to over-sexualizing women in order to advertise our game (many similar games
do, and it frustrates me). I'm also going to make a conscious commitment right
now to be aware the way I behave around women in the gaming industry and make
sure I'm doing my job to help stop the issue, not propagate it.

Thank you so much for sharing this.

~~~
tomp
> 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 males, then it makes sense
to use what males most powerfully respond to in your ads - pretty women.

~~~
chiubaka
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.

~~~
shrnky
The men are usually represented in the same way. Muscular, Agile, etc.

~~~
Gracana
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.

~~~
ThomPete
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.

~~~
mperd
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.

~~~
ThomPete
I think they do.

------
s1300045
It is sort of related. It's a rant. I have many friends in the STEM field, or
friends I play video games with. And I simply cannot introduce them to any of
my females friends, or any friends from different social circles for that
matter. They are a special breed of people, brilliant and quick, and they are
also egotistic and mean.

They are very quick to make jokes of your mistakes or shortcoming. The way
they pry and tease is the manifest of how exceptional they think they are.
They believe they are above social norms. Being nice is for the weak and
unenlightened mass. They have an opinion, they will have you know.

They deliberately choose to ignore and not understand why making certain
remarks and some conversation topics make people uncomfortable. And when they
want to insult you, they will insult in the most uncivilized way. When they
want to hurt you, they simply do not understand when a line is crossed.

And I am sure they are not the minority. Even if they are, they are the loud
and obnoxious minority that gives everyone a bad name. I absolutely understand
why people decline to be part of that community, why there aren't as many
females in that workspace. Stigmas and stereotypes are for a reason.

~~~
alexqgb
There's a name for people like that: assholes.

There's also a lot of insecurity going on there, but that's true of most
people. The difference is in how we deal with it. Some people do so by trying
to become kinder and more decent people, which has an _amazing_ effect on your
own level of social comfort. Others try to bring the people who threaten them
down to their level (or beneath, if possible). Oddly enough, this strategy
does not improve the underlying level of social ease.

Quite the opposite. I mean, these are people (a) who act like assholes
specifically to (b) lower those around them so they don't have to (c) do the
hard work of making themselves better. It's a triple play of shitty behavior
stemming from a toxic combination of fear and laziness on one hand, combined
with sickening disregard for others.

The result is clear. You don't introduce them to others. In other words, you
specifically and deliberately limit their social horizons, having (correctly)
judged them as unfit for decent company.

This could be an addressable problem if the people in question had a baseline
of personal integrity. But as you noted, they can also be willfully ignorant
when convenient. Aside from being intellectually dishonest (which is maddening
in its own right), it's also a major barrier to personal development. Self-
reinforcing assholedom, essentially.

So, uh, maybe you need other friends?

------
NotAtWork
I always find it very strange that we don't apply spam filters and recent
machine learning techniques to the problem of filtering comments.

If I looked at my email unfiltered, I'd think one in three of the people
sending me messages in the past day were unusually concerned about the state
of my penis.

From a not-adding-anything-to-the-discussion perspective, dead baby pictures
and random threats of rape or acts of violence are even less useful than those
adds telling me how to work at home. From a cost-benefit perspective for the
people involved, it's very easy for someone relatively unimportant to get an
outsized influence on social interactions if they can easily reach people who
actually matter with harassing comments, at virtually no cost to themselves.

So why don't we use tools to shape the online discussion and feedback
mechanisms, the same way we do with our email inboxes?

Perhaps I'm just too out of the loop to see it being done.

~~~
eli
Maybe there's some value there, but my experience is that you can rarely solve
a "people" problem with a purely technical solution.

Also, as a society, I'd like to think we can do better than "sorry about the
rape/murder threats, we'll try to hide most of them from you"

~~~
cyorir
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.

~~~
NotAtWork
> 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 each crazy
person sends 15 emails before finding a new thing to obsess about, that's
4,500 threatening or otherwise crazy emails in response - which certainly
seems like a flood to the person being responded to - but doesn't actually
tell us anything about the population watching the video, at large, except
that it has a similar percentage of crazy people to society at large.

Continuing the hypothetical: if you assume a normal person only sends 2
emails, then you only have 19000 normal emails to 4500 crazy ones, because
crazy people are more talkative. At 1.2 emails for a normal person, It's 11000
to 4500, which makes crazy emails over a quarter of all messages received in
response - a vastly disproportionate number considering they were 3% of
respondents.

One thing that automated filters can provide is sentiment analysis and looking
at related messages, to pull out the underlying distribution of people
responding (and hence seeing it's just people being people), rather than just
seeing the surface level "We have 25% crazy emails!"

I would have to see a much more detailed analysis of the emails, responses,
and distribution of them to conclude that it's a widespread problem, rather
than a small crazy contingent being amplified above their importance by just
posting a lot.

~~~
cyorir
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.

~~~
seanflyon
Wouldn't making it harder for that small toxic contingent to be heard improve
the situation?

~~~
georgiapeach
How would you feel if a government agency or ISP or some other adversary used
such technology to censor all your online communications -- so you couldn't
ever contact anyone, through any protocol -- because it considered you to be
undesirable/objectionable/dangerous for its own reasons?

~~~
seanflyon
That would be both terrible and dramatically different from what I was talking
about. The context here is private websites filtering comments. If you are in
a private restaurant expressing some horribly offensive opinion it is
appropriate for the owner to ask you to leave. It would not be appropriate for
the police to come in and gag you.

~~~
georgiapeach
There is no difference whatsoever. All your censored communications would be
attempted -- and rejected -- through private websites, too.

So how would you feel about it? How would you feel about the oppression you're
looking to subject others to, being applied to you?

~~~
seanflyon
How would I feel if every website on the internet decided that I was so toxic
that they banned me? It's hard to say considering that has happened to a total
of 0 people ever.

You have the right to free speech, but you do not have the right to be
listened to. If you are on private property the owner can ask you to leave. If
I wrote a script to send you an obnoxious email every 5 minutes I imagine you
would set up a filter so you would not have to read them or even be aware of
their existence. You don't have the right to make other people read your
(hypothetically) obnoxious comments any more than I have the right to make you
read my obnoxious emails.

~~~
georgiapeach
> It's hard to say considering that has happened to a total of 0 people ever.

It's what you're proposing to do to other people, so you have the ethical
burden of considering how you'd feel if it were done to you.

So how would you feel? Would you feel that it were ethical, even if it were
somehow legally justified? Would you accept it? Would you consider it a good,
just, humane use of technology? Stop evading the question and answer it
already.

~~~
seanflyon
You and I are still talking about very different things. I am not proposing
banning people from the internet. I am proposing that private websites should
filter out particularly obnoxious hateful and unreasonable comments.

How would I feel if a website removed my profane, unreasonable, and offensive
comment? Ashamed. Considering a website has no obligation to display my
comment I think it would be ethical (and of course legal) for them to not
display horrible comments. I would accept it. I see nothing inhumane or unjust
about a website declining to distribute my hate speech.

~~~
georgiapeach
We are talking about the exact same thing and you keep trying to evade the
question.

How would you feel if websites colluded to prevent you from communicating at
all, based on what _they_ consider to be undesirable, not based on what _you_
consider to be undesirable? By definition, you're already negatively
predisposed to what you consider to be undesirable, so your proposed scenario
never comes up. Mine does.

It doesn't need to have anything to do with profanity. It could be something
as simple as you being a pro-censorship piece of shit. Or something else. Who
knows. It doesn't matter. What matters is them oppressing you the way you'd
like to oppress others, based on criteria you don't necessarily agree with,
and possibly don't even know. How would you feel about that?

Stop trying to evade the question. If you evade it one more time, I will
consider you to have conceded.

~~~
seanflyon
What question have I evaded?

"How would you feel if websites colluded to prevent you from communicating at
all"? They don't have that ability; a website cannot reach through my computer
screen and gag me. Since the you question are literally asking is absurd, I
guessed you really mean to ask how I would feel if a website removed my
comment, which I answered. Now I think you are asking how I would feel if
every single website agreed to a common blacklist and put me on it. This is
still quite far fetched and drastically different from what I am talking
about, but I will answer it anyway. I would feel annoyed and embarrassed.

What I am talking about (removing vile comments) is already done manually, so
your notion that it "never comes up" is strange. If you right to force other
to distribute rape threats is so important to you then I doubt we will come to
an agreement.

Lastly, there is no need to call me a "piece of shit". If you stoop to this
level again, I will consider you to have conceded.

~~~
georgiapeach
> They don't have that ability;

Yes, they do. What stops private parties from colluding? Nothing. What stops
your local ISP (in most locations, in a position of local monopoly) from
denying you access, even without participation from websites? Nothing. What
stops them from doing this for their own reasons, which you might not
necessarily agree with, and possibly don't even know? Nothing.

And the actual point that you keep evading -- what stops other parties from
approving of ideas and speech that you disapprove of, and vice versa? Nothing.
What stops them from oppressing you, the way you want to oppress others, in a
way that enforces this diametrically opposed configuration of approval and
disapproval? Nothing. What stops them from considering every idea and form of
speech that you've ever perpetrated, and every idea and form of speech that
you stand for, to be vile, and to do everything in their power to censor,
silence, and oppress you as a result? Nothing.

You have evaded once again, and lost by default. Thanks for your time, anyway.

P.S. I didn't call you a piece of shit, the hypothetical oppressive parties in
the hypothetical scenario did. You lose by default for putting words in my
mouth, as well.

~~~
seanflyon
You said "prevent you from communicating at all" I pointed out that websites
clearly and obviously do not have this power to do what you are literally
suggesting and asked what you actually meant. You ignored my response and my
question. At this point I think you are being purposely obtuse. Either that or
you did not comprehend my comment.

I have already answered the question you think I am evading.

------
cheez
> 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 and they are usually targets of such behaviour.

I'd hope that the women I work with aren't regularly getting rape threats from
my co-workers...

> I’ve personally never heard of a man in the games industry getting rape
> threats for having an opinion.

Because men are not women, and women are not men, it goes a little something
like this: rape is an act of power (not sexual satisfaction). The threat of
rape is the threat of asserting power over someone else. When these lowlifes
are offended by a woman, they respond with the animal instinct of threatening
to overpower them and rape is the closely available tool. None of them would
actually ever have the guts to rape, I'm sure.

When men have contrarian opinions, rape is not threatened, but a whole chain
of events occurs, the purpose of which is to remove as much power as possible
from that man.

Consider famous causes that you know of where men who are not independently
wealthy and have voiced opinions that are controversial to some. What happened
to them? They were fired, demoted, jailed, investigated etc. The PyCon case
some time back comes to mind.

Consider famous cases of women who did the same. What happened to them?
Threats of rape. The same woman involved in the PyCon case, I'll bet, received
rape threats. Additionally, she did get fired because she was a public
spokesperson for her company.

These threats are about asserting power over dissenting viewpoints in a bid to
make yours dominant. You perhaps won't outright hear of a man getting
threatened with rape, except maybe in prison or during a competitive game, but
you will definitely hear of men being hurt in different ways for having
opinions that make people uncomfortable.

~~~
eli
I get what you're saying... but I think you're getting downvoted because it's
dangerously close to victim-blaming. No matter what they wrote, nobody ever
deserves graphic threats of rape and murder.

And, c'mon, by your definition pretty much anyone with an internet presence
and an opinion is a public figure, and therefore a "target." I don't think
that's a helpful way to approach the problem.

~~~
cheez
In the area of competitive sports, it is pretty common to receive death
threats for athletes who do not perform well.

I'm not saying it's right. It's not. I'm saying that the reader needs to tease
apart the two.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>In the area of competitive sports, it is pretty common to receive death
threats for athletes who do not perform well.

You are making this comparison because you haven't fully thought things
through. In your mind, death is worse than rape, therefore receiving death
threats is worse than receiving rape threats. But it's not so simple.

Rape threats are significantly worse than death threats, for a similar reason
that killing children is worse than killing adults. Women are a vulnerable
group in society -- they are smaller and physically weaker than men on
average, and are socially oppressed on top of that. If both rape threats and
death threats are an attempt at exerting power (with no intention of actually
carrying through with the threat), then rape threat is a lot worse because it
exploits a vulnerable group in the most mentally damaging way possible.

~~~
tomp
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 similar
> reason that killing children is worse than killing adults (a child has a
> longer life and more choices to make than an adult, so killing a child is
> more choice-reducing than killing an adult - just as killing is more choice-
> reducing than raping). Men are a vulnerable group in society -- they are
> physically stronger than women on average and therefore work more dangerous
> jobs, and commit more suicides and die sooner on top of that. If both rape
> threats and death threats are an attempt at exerting power (with no
> intention of actually carrying through with the threat), then a death threat
> is a lot worse because it exploits a vulnerable group in the most mentally
> damaging way possible.

~~~
enraged_camel
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 of threats or other displays of hostility
is perceived and treated as part of the culture (even though it still sucks).

Rape threats against females are made as a way of mentally and emotionally
damaging them. The intent is to harm, oppress and silence. This alone makes
them way worse than death threats made against players, because women are
targeted specifically due to their perceived weakness and inferiority.

P.S. I'm very disappointed by the down-votes. If people are disagreeing with
what I'm saying then the situation is much more hopeless than the anecdotes in
the article suggest.

~~~
jev
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'.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>If you imply that women are inferior though, the statement has to be
vigorously opposed.

I said _perceived_ inferiority. I didn't say they are inferior.

------
Jemaclus
I read articles like this, and I think to myself, "Damn, I'm glad I'm not one
of those guys."

Then every time I see a photo of Marissa Mayer, I think, "Damn, she's hot."
And then I hate myself for making that my first thought instead of something
more equal like, "Damn, she's accomplished and brilliant" like I do when I see
a photo of Robert Downey Jr or Idris Elba or Benedict Cumberbatch. But no, if
it's a woman, my first thought is about her looks instead of... well, instead
of anything else.

I'm really glad I don't have kids (yet), and in a lot of ways, I hope I don't
have a daughter. I'd rather raise a son to treat women fairly and with respect
than to have a daughter who has to live in a world where articles like this
are written. But if I had a daughter... I'd do my best to help her be strong
and confident, and to make her way successfully in a world where this kind of
shit goes on.

So senseless. :(

~~~
samirmenon
I don't know, I'm gay, and when I see a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch or
Robert Downey Jr, I certainly don't think "Damn, he's accomplished and
brilliant"; I think "Damn, he's hot!"

~~~
oldmanjay
When I see a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch, I think "he looks awfully
pinched. He might need more fiber."

I'm straight. Not sure what impact that has.

------
orf
It's depressing that the first few top level comments here have been deleted
due to their ridiculous content, people presumably read the article then
decided to post things like "its banter, get over it. Men deal with it all the
time".

Just shows how deep the problem goes I guess.

~~~
sp332
The article is about case studies, but sometimes it helps to get some numbers
too. e.g. "Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100
sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received
3.7." [http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-
ar...](http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-arent-
welcome-internet-72170/)

~~~
hnha
by how many senders?

------
imgabe
> 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. It's an unfortunate consequence of the Internet and any area where
you have a large audience that a small active segment is going to produce a
large impression.

Yes, maybe your friend and even most men feel differently when a woman
criticizes them than when a man does. No it is absolutely NOT a normal, male
response to start making rape and death threats because of it.

I think these responses are a combination of seriously disturbed individuals
and literal or mental children who haven't yet fully internalized that there
are real live human beings on the other end of the keyboard and are trying to
be shocking.

I think making a few examples would deter the idiots who think this is
amusing. I mean, that one kid in Texas made an offhand, sarcastic comment
about shooting up a school and got himself arrested within a couple of days.
It would be nice to see police take other threats as seriously.

~~~
cushychicken
>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 that.

I think where we're failing as a society is the inability to close the loop
and turn "not all men" into "yo dude, not cool" \- we don't seem to be very
good at getting men to call out sexism in other men.

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

~~~
dfxm12
_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.

~~~
cushychicken
Maybe what I meant was some kind of a way to do this without provoking a
confrontation.

Perhaps that's just the nature of the beast, though.

------
thinkpad20
I'm a male in the software industry, and I never really know what to make of
these sorts of articles. It's terrible that someone should have to go through
this. The anonymity of the internet is a great and terrible thing -- some
people really get off on being horrible to people, and unfortunately when that
person is a male, and they know they're talking to a woman, the low-hanging
fruit is base sexism. But what is supposed to be done about it? More
specifically, what am _I_ supposed to do about it? I know that I find that
kind of behavior abhorrent. I would never think that stuff, let alone say it.
Knowing my coworkers as I do, I'm 99% sure that the same can be said of them.
So, I just don't know how to respond to this. Should I feel guilty? For what?
I didn't do this stuff. The issue that I have with this is that I feel like
I'm supposed to feel like a bad person because of my gender. Quotes like "men
tend to inherently [insert stereotype here]" are apparently great enough to be
made inspirational posters out of. Is the author oblivious to this sexism? Or
is it OK, because it's targeting men?

I think it's deplorable what the author and the women she describes have gone
through. I think that we all should re-examine our behavior to ensure that we
aren't perpetrating this sort of thing. But I wish that the article, and
others like it, weren't couched in terms of demonizing half of humanity.

~~~
clay_to_n
I think you need to stop reading things like this as "demonizing half of
humanity." You being offended by an article like this is actually part of the
problem, it results in silencing articles like this because some men don't
like them, or don't feel like it applies to them.

Personally, as a male who isn't nearly as terrible as many of the men in this
article, I think these articles are important. It is worth reading to raise
your own awareness of the problems women face in our industry, and it is also
worth reading to heighten awareness of your own actions, especially subtle
things you might do and not be aware of. We should all be learning and try to
better ourselves.

~~~
jquery
The article was very sexist. He is not "part of the problem" because he was
offended by it. Maybe you don't see how sexist it is because you were
predisposed to agree with it.

EDIT: Direct quote from the article: "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."

Anyone is justified at being offended by that.

------
JonnieCache
Ironically, "woman is the nigger of the world" is a quote from Yoko Ono and
the title of a song she did with John Lennon; it was meant to be a piece of
feminist sloganeering.

Somebody got a bit confused.

~~~
Gracana
It's still kind of a terrible statement in its original context, like, that is
the opposite of intersectionality.

------
belorn
While this is all horrible things human beings are saying to other human
beings, the idea that men do not get criticized is false. I wish the article
would stop trying to repeat this over and over again, since it distracts from
the issue it brings up: The words use when people send insult directed at
women.

Insults are different when directed at a women than men, and the cause is not
as simple as typing the word sexism. Insults, like swearing, is rooted in
social norms. People use terms and concept which is understood by others in
their social environment. This is why men will not get rape threat, since in
most social groups, people think men can not get raped. It make no sense to
threaten others with something that they do not think could happen in the
first place.

People who send insults are expecting a predicted reaction (Remember several
research papers making this specific statement). If a specific insult directed
at a woman would not result in the same reaction as if it was directed at a
man, then the insulter will change which words they use when insulting men.
Which words they use has actually very small meaning given that they receive
the expected reaction.

Rather then talking about how women get harassment and men do not, maybe we
should talk about why the culture of insults are so personal and violent
against women, and so focused on skill and ability for men. Why do not men get
insults like "dam, you look ugly" and women get "don't quit your day job, you
suck!". When was the last time you saw someone go up to female speaker and say
"you do not understand this!", or loudly being argued with by someone in the
audience over a technical detail.

Culture for male and female behavior is not identical when it comes to bad
behavior. The article says: "I have yet to talk to a man who has had to call a
police officer due to a stalker". The obvious reason is that female stalkers
tend to focus on celebrities (small number of people), while male stalkers
tend to focus on people they find in the local area. Stalking is bad, be that
male or female stalker, and who they target is not same. Pretend that one do
not exist because it is different is not going to make sexism less in society.

------
EarthLaunch
What should a game studio to do counter this and make its employees safe from
it?

~~~
Jemaclus
I think the best thing to do as far as internal harassment goes is to
basically have a no tolerance policy from the higher-ups. Not so much a
"you'll get fired" thing but having everyone step up and say "Hey, that's not
cool" when someone makes a sexist joke.

At my job, we had a guy for awhile who would post funny pictures in chat.
Every once in awhile, he'd post something NSFW (not necessarily nudity) and
all the guys would just say "lol" and the women wouldn't respond at all. What
should have happened (and I'm guilty of not doing this) is that all of the
other men should have stepped in and said "Hey, you know, that's not cool."

A lot of why this kind of stuff happens, I think, is that there's a sort of
acceptance implied by the fact that so few men speak out about it. We just let
it happen. We frown inside -- or maybe we really think it's funny! -- but we
never say "Don't do that."

A strong culture of morality, of speaking up when something is wrong, would go
a long way to helping foster a safe, secure atmosphere. Public shaming will
stop that behavior in its tracks. Eventually, either the harassment stops or
that person leaves.

In the case of my coworker, I don't think he really thought things through. I
don't think he meant to be offensive or post sexually harassing things, I
think he just honestly thought they were funny and posted them. That doesn't
make it okay, but it doesn't mean he needs to be fired, either. He just needed
to be told "That's not cool" enough times to make it stick.

As far as external harassment goes, like the ones in the article, I'm not
really sure. I think we as a community need to just stand up against this type
of behavior, but it's hard when the harassment is all private, like via email
or text messages.

TL;DR Say "That's not cool" when bad shit goes on.

~~~
tomp
Personally, I disagree. I have no problem my coworkers saying
dick/sex/insulting/racist/etc jokes, whether they are male or female. If I
worked at a company that claimed to have a "relaxed" office culture (i.e. most
startups, not corporations), I would strongly voice my opinion that such
censorship is inappropriate. The recent case of an Attlasian developer making
a joke about his girlfriend at a conference comes to mind - I would offer my
support for such a coworker and publicly state that I think the company's
reaction was inappropriate.

Obviously, if people want to opt out of such email, they should be able to,
but some might also do it for other reasons (e.g. prefer less distractions in
their inbox).

~~~
Jemaclus
Well, that's the thing, isn't it? It's not about whether _you 're_ cool with
it -- it's about whether everyone is cool with it. Just because you like dick
jokes doesn't mean that your female coworkers (or any of them, really) are
comfortable with it. Since you can't speak for everyone, and some people can't
speak up for themselves without making themselves targets, then it's your
responsibility as a member of the team to make a judgment call: is this
appropriate or not?

If you decide it's inappropriate, you should say something.

If you decide it's appropriate, don't.

I'm not advocating censorship, but I am advocating that you should push back
if someone's doing something offensive. Your female coworkers are probably
more likely to go to HR or the CEO to complain (in a relatively safe manner)
than to speak up in "public", especially amongst a bunch of men who think
"it's just a joke" or "it's just banter." And I'm pretty sure we both agree
that talking to HR can make the whole thing way worse.

~~~
tomp
I disagree - maybe because I only perceive speech as "offensive" if it's
directly insulting to a targeted person - which impersonal jokes (whether
"dick jokes" or any other jokes) are not. In any case, I would rather err on
the side of freedom, allow most communications (except insults, secrets, and
whatever is illegal, such as hate speech), and rely on people to proactively
say they are uncomfortable with something. I understand that not everyone
wants that, but then again, I would prefer to not have to wear a suit to work,
while others might. We just won't work together.

~~~
Fomite
Have you ever asked the people who might be targeted by those jokes (women,
minorities, etc.) if they feel comfortable with them?

Keep in mind a joke about someone "like you" is easy to read as a comment
about you.

~~~
tomp
I have. They might, or they might not. But instead of changing myself, or
expecting them to change, I simply choose not to associate with them.

------
scotty79
I'd say that internet could use a whole lot more killfiles, hellbanning, spam
filters trained not only against commercial messages, whitelisting. The only
reason that default is to allow for communication is that it's easier to
implement. In the old times only kings could afford decent cutlery. Nowadays
every peasent can. When I try to communicate with Obama today I won't succeed.
Maybe in not so distant future if someone would want to communicate with me he
will have to prove that he has something I'm interested in hearing. And
another rape threat is rarely interesting.

------
caio1982
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.

~~~
admyral
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.

------
rafaelCosman
"Footnote: Two of the names of women that agreed to interviews for this
article were changed at their request."

It's telling (about the state of the industry) that two of these women felt
uncomfortable sharing their names even while interviewing for an article about
this very topic.

~~~
georgiapeach
Anyone should feel uncomfortable making up unsubstantiated bullshit to push a
toxic, hateful, misandric agenda.

------
tux1968
It's sometimes sad to look at our social maturity or lack thereof. But
articles like this are important to force us to look at ourselves. The
problems highlighted in the article are a result of the anonymity of the
internet and the immaturity and natural aggressiveness of young men. It seems
we're fighting our primitive selves, and for that there are no easy answers.

Would just like to say though, that most men are not the perpetrators of such
acts, and in fact are quite often victims of men like these in one way or
another. Women have many natural allies amongst men.

Anyway, it seems to me that such behavior wont survive being exposed to
daylight, and that over time progress will be made.

------
jarin
I would argue that men don't get rape threats because most men don't see rape
as a realistic threat to themselves.

Instead, we have our masculinity, loyalty, abilities, work ethic, and/or
integrity attacked, because those are the things that cut us to the core.

I'm not saying that women don't care about those things, I'm just saying that
when someone is trying to be a dick they're going to go after the lowest
hanging fruit.

Of course, I think we all need to keep working to end this kind of harassment.
We all know it exists, and most of us guys disapprove of it, but few of us are
taking the extra step of saying "that's not ok, dude" when it happens.

In the meantime, I've had some pretty hurtful/maddening stuff directed at me
in the past by a group of people online, and I learned that you either take
the Phil Fish route and flame out, or you have to find some way to distance
yourself emotionally from the bullshit or ignore it. It's fucked up, but you
have to protect your sanity until the problem is fixed (which it might never
be).

Edit: Unrelated to the topic, but it's interesting how this comment got a
large number of upvotes before the downvote brigade started trickling in. I'm
not anti-feminist here, folks. Just trying to elaborate on the discussion and
hopefully learn some things.

~~~
arrrg
I do see women’s femininity (or lack of masculinity, actually!), loyalty,
especially abilities, work ethic and/or integrity attacked all the time. I
don’t really understand why you are under the impression that doesn’t happen
to women. The objectification and threats of (sexual) violence happen in
addition to that.

Again, you seem to argue that there is some kind of balance in harassment and
both men and women receive the same amount. That is not true at all.

~~~
briantakita
Disclaimer: I'm male & this is my opinion.

All things being equal (content, credentials of speaker, etc), a woman
speaking tends to get more attention than a male. People are naturally more
attracted to the feminine than the masculine.

Exuding feminine energy draws people in. This expression may or may not be
conscious. It's at least partially conscious though. It often works to that
person's advantage to look good.

People are going to react to this feminine energy who also has something to
say. I understand that it's not fair to emphasize the feminine, however we are
driven more by emotions than by rational thought (even "rational" thought
tends to be driven by emotion).

Another angle is harassment toward men does happen and is simply not talked
about, laughed off, and downplayed. It's not useful to keep score and
categorize who harassment happens to. If you are a victim of harassment, does
it matter that you fall within a majority or minority of the demographics?

------
avz
> "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."

This point isn't stressed enough. Majority of people treat criticism
differently depending on the gender of the source. Other types of interaction
are also hugely dependent on gender. We even refer to each other with
different pronouns depending on the type of sexual organs our bodies are
equipped with. This isn't right.

~~~
dictum
Anecdata: I'm a man and I get more defensive when men criticize me than when
women do.

------
dgreensp
I was disappointed by the "Letters to Women" video because I kept waiting for
a gender-specific slur, and there weren't any! A different "letter" might have
been chosen to make the point better.

If you put your anthropologist hat on, being called a "tasteless, stupid-ass,
bitch-ass f--ktard" who should "go f--k your slutty-ass bitch mother" is a
kind of acceptance. You're on the receiving end of all the same deeply
offensive, vaguely emasculating language you'd get if you were "one of the
guys" who happens to be a stupid noob, being criticized for your taste in
games(!) along with your general cluelessness and total impotence and
inadequacy. It's the kind of acknowledgment you get when a fellow rapper pours
his heart into explaining that you suck and he rules.

I guess what I'm saying is, this letter is an example of "you-are-a-low-
status-male" invective, and it's pretty easy to walk into a stream of it in
certain communities. The fact that it was knowingly directed at a woman is
what strikes me first, and in that sense it seems less like sexism than some
sort of f--ed up equality.

------
joyeuse6701
I'm going to leave this here, don't accept the form of argument from the
article quite yet:

>Keeping in mind that actual stalking has never been dealt with in any
significant way ever, the desire of a few female writers to curb online
anonymity wouldn't be enough to get an @ mention, except that this happens to
coincide with what the media wants, and now we have the two vectors summing to
form a public health crisis. "Cyberbullying is a huge problem!" Yes, but not
because it is hurtful, HA! no one cares about your feelings-- but because
criticism makes women want to be more private-- and the privacy of the women
is bad. The women have to be online, they do most of the clicking and receive
most of the clicks. Anonymous cyberbullying is a barrier to increasing
consumption, it's gotta go.

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html)

------
socrates1998
Yeah, this is bad. It really is about the culture in which we are raised.

Boys are raised to deal with these types of insults and threats by standing up
for yourself and being assertive (even aggressive) when dealing with hate.

So, boys learn to seek out weakness and exploit it. Boys also learn that from
an early age, when you talk shit or are an asshole that you could end up doing
it to the wrong person and end up with a whole world of shit.

And by the time they are older, boys have generally learned this lesson.
Essentially, boys learn to fear other boys.

However, boys don't learn to fear women in the same way, so they continue this
type of asshole behavior to adult women since they don't fear the
repercussions.

Basically, women in the gaming industry are not raised in the culture are seen
as weak outsiders who can't defend themselves (easy targets for assholes).

It's sad and I don't really see a way around it.

------
hansy
I'm not shocked by this at all. Spend some time in a Twitch channel hosted by
a woman and you'll see what kind of misogynist, overly sexual advances these
streamers have to endure every day.

Yes, some women streamers do flaunt their sexuality (wearing low tops while
streaming for instance), and while many view this as perpetuating
objectification of women, I view this type of decision as a marketing
decision. I think these women are intelligent enough to know sex sells, but
aren't so shallow as to actually believe their attractiveness defines who they
are.

Unfortunately, the average person is a moron, and it doesn't help matters when
group-think is rampant in chat rooms.

------
im3w1l
My view of how these things happen: Game studio is developing a game revolving
around Battle of Nanking. Two teams compete on how many civilians they can
rape and kill in five minutes.

Presumtive buyers are drooling with excitement over this great game.

A woman joins the company and start arguing that the game is bad for our
youth. It promotes rape culture. The game should instead revolve around a
secret romance between two homosexuals in the army.

The people at the studio start thinking that, you know maybe she is sort of
right, and post that on their blog.

Those who have been longing for the game get extremely upset. They feel that
an outsider is destroying "their" game.

The craziest few of them threaten the woman.

------
NAFV_P
> _" They filled my Tumblr mailbox with the usual anon posts like, ‘Die, you
> fucking cunt!’ And, ‘You'll know when I rape your mouth hole, bitch!’ When I
> turned off anonymous messages, they made new Tumblr accounts and continued
> to spam me. Later, they discovered the link to my personal webpage and sent
> hate mail through there. I still get an occasional random hate message
> through my website."_

There is an assumption that all these anonymous posts are from men, but there
is the possibility that some are from women.

I've read a few articles like this, but I cannot remember one which looks at
sexism from a world wide web oriented viewpoint.

------
shrnky
How does the Feminist movement square itself with the fact that many women
actually like being prized for their beauty and sex appeal?

I'd like to start a campaign called "It's cool." It would require some form of
an indicator. A sticker or button perhaps? Women who like having their beauty
and/or sex appeal noticed could wear it on their person. Posters with these
women could have it on display. Men would know, "It's cool" she likes that I
appreciate her looks.

Would this satisfy the Feminists? Doubtful. More than likely these women would
be attacked and ridiculed for what makes them happy.

~~~
hackuser
> How does the Feminist movement square itself with the fact that many women
> actually like being prized for their beauty and sex appeal?

I didn't see any mention of appreciating beauty and sex appeal. I read an
article about rape threats, degrading comments about appearance, and
objectification of women. I don't know if you mean to equate those things, but
they are not equal. Also, 'prizing' women is objectification (though perhaps
you didn't mean that literally) -- people aren't trophies or racehorses --
complimenting someone when they are receptive to it is just nice.

Comments about beauty and sex appeal also can be a way to attack women. For
example, if you were a woman my comment here could be 'don't worry your pretty
little head about it' or simply 'wow you have great tits -- can I sleep with
you?'

~~~
georgiapeach
You played the part of the toxic feminist in OP's comment beautifully, and you
didn't even realize that you were doing it!

It's hilarious!

------
FamilyVitamin
One thing I could understand that why she's being hated is, it is not the
first time she post feminism stuff with strong opinion on website, and then
refuse anyone to comment it. She just acts like those garbage class politician
that trying to brainwash you while preventing ppl from discussing the
sensitive opinion. I wouldn't say it's owned, but I know why some ppl will not
like her.

~~~
scott_s
I don't think that was her decision. Comments were open for a long time, and I
think the Polygon staff closed them.

Consider: perhaps they were closed for the very reason that she wrote this
piece.

------
83457
Can someone explain to me if this is just the online gaming culture intruding
on the professional game dev industry or actual industry professionals making
comments like this? I have been heavy into CSGO this year and rarely does a
match go by without very offensive comments from someone. I have grown a thick
skin to this sort of thing online but could not imagine it intruding into real
life.

------
_Adam
>One of the consequences is that men are extremely sensitive to being
criticized by women

What the fuck? Only the weakest and most cowardly men negatively react to
criticism from women (and other men).

If someone is objectively or logically criticizing you, then they're doing you
a huge favor. Thank them, regardless of their gender.

------
EarthLaunch
HN clearly sunk this thread. Why?

------
byerley
Why can't we get any sensible articles about this problem? Do they just not
get any attention on aggregation sites?

Call this "victim blaming" if you want, but I'm going to critique the article
because it's bad. I'm not commenting on any of the surrounding events because,
honestly, claiming you've been harassed in the past doesn't excuse bad
journalism -

She starts the article by alienating her intended audience: Leading with a
"triggering content" warning and the worst example she had may be eye-
catching, but causes both men and women who might be sympathetic but ignorant
to immediately write it off as extremist hysteria. I had a lot of trouble
pushing myself to read the rest of the article.

Her evidence is severely lacking: Again, case studies are good for
sensationalist articles, but they don't hold up to any amount of skeptical
scrutiny. She presents 4 brief accounts and two of them are relatively
anonymous. You can collect four respectable people who believe just about
anything if you try.

She uses sweeping generalizations: All men feel this way, all women feel that
way, all women are censored, ect. Even more insulting to an intelligent reader
is that she backs up her assertions with hack psychology.

She refutes statistical trends with anecdotes: "The Myth: The game industry is
a field men are drawn to more than women." I'm sorry, but the male
predisposition towards video games and game development is just a statistical
fact. Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, it's less true now than it once was due
to advances in technology. Don't lie to your reader and tell them it's a myth,
rather, explain why it doesn't excuse the behavior.

I think this is a problem in some places. I want women to feel comfortable in
game development and journalism. I want women to feel more comfortable in a
lot of industries. This article is the wrong way to spread awareness.

~~~
gclaramunt
Even if they're just outliers, they deserve the right to let their situation
be known. You're pretty close to "you didn't communicate according to my
standards, so I'm going to ignore you". How do you know your complaints about
style aren't an excuse to avoid confronting the problem? Not saying you are,
but for my part, even if they do it imperfectly, I will listen, I don't want
my kids to grow up in world where this kind of things gets ignored

~~~
byerley
> How do you know your complaints about style aren't an excuse to avoid
> confronting the problem?

Because I would have the same complaints regardless of the subject. Not all
opinions deserve equal consideration and you have a burden of proof when
trying to convince your reader of something. If anything, I gave this article
more attention than I normally would have because I sincerely want properly
condensed information about the topic and I haven't found it.

> I don't want my kids to grow up in world where this kind of things gets
> ignored

I want my children to understand perspective. You can't grieve for every
individual injustice in the world, you can only strive to make it better
overall.

~~~
gclaramunt
> I want my children to understand perspective. You can't grieve for every
> individual injustice in the world, you can only strive to make it better
> overall.

Totally agree. I found the article helpful overall, I understand it must have
been difficult to write it, so I'm giving it more leeway

------
Geekette
These are the sorts of issues that make one wish anonymity online was
impossible or always traceable. The cowardice that lives in people is
astounding. For those muttering the free speech line: freedom of speech ≠
freedom of consequences.

~~~
Geekette
Not sure why I'm being downvoted for wishing for an environment where people
wouldn't be able to send rape/death threats anonymously and responding to the
comment (now deleted) that defended such threats as free speech.

~~~
jarin
It's probably because there are also plenty of excellent reasons to have
anonymity as an option online.

~~~
Geekette
Oh, I absolutely agree there are. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly
enough: these types of harassment makes me willing to forgo the legitimate
opportunities for anonymity, just to be able to be able to have an environment
where such harassment is minimized and traceable when it does happen.

It might seem extreme, but when you've been on the receiving end of numerous
vile messages a day, including rape/death threats, discovery of your home
address and gems like "Women are the niggers of gender ... If you killed
yourself, I wouldn’t even fuck the corpse" (as referenced in article), non-
anonymity may seem appealing.

~~~
Bahamut
I've been on a similar end with different types of threats as a male and have
friends that have had similar types of threats (male and female).

I agree with you completely that anonymity should not trump accountability.
That does not mean that they have to be mutually exclusive goals, but I too am
at the point where I believe people should be held accountable for their
actions.

------
eggbrain
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 are underrepresented in game
development. The former lets people harass, taunt, and threaten with many
times very few consequences, whereas the latter leads to favoritism to other
members of the in-group, and derogation of the out-group.

So what can we do? Unfortunately, the issues are larger than me to grasp. But
since we are on Hacker News, I'll give a few technological solutions I've
taken a few minutes to come up with that may help:

1\. We have spam filters right now on email -- what if those filters also
watched for hate words? If it met a certain threshold, the message would not
be shown in the main article. We could mark email/comments as "hateful", and
when it reached a certain threshold that comment would be hashed and added to
a repository that could be checked against for future comments. People would
try to get around it like they do spam filters (I H.A.T.E Y.O.U., etc), but
with enough training I feel a good deal could be filtered out.

2\. HR departments should be moved to unbiased third party services. I feel
many employees are afraid to report discrimination or harassment because many
times their HR coordinator knows the people involved. If you move it to an
unbiased third party, you can report pseudo-anonymously (they will know who
reported, but won't tell the company until after they have confirmed or need
to follow up with the company) without the worry that the third party is
biased towards a specific party.

There needs to be a lot more thought put into how we can fix this than the few
minutes I spent above, but it might be a good first step.

EDIT: modified for brevity's sake. (I'll replace with the original again if
people want to read it)

~~~
im3w1l
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.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
To change what, exactly?

------
oldmanjay
This is the sort of topic that shouldn't be allowed to have comments. People
are far too reactionary to have a productive discussion.

~~~
im3w1l
So you are saying we must stop people from arguing the wrong positions?

~~~
oldmanjay
Not exactly. I'm saying the signal-to-noise ratio inevitably drops below a
threshold where anything useful can be derived.

I will admit this site is better than most. I've been accused of actually
being a rapist in other discussions, amongst other indignities.

------
Bahamut
Why is this getting flagged to hell?

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Makes the community look bad.

It's like a funhouse mirror that whoops-a-doodle was a regular mirror the
whole time.

------
WorldWideWayne
In my experience, men and boys talk to each other this way too. So, if women
want equality - isn't that what they're getting?

------
paulhauggis
"The Reality: If you are a woman in the industry with a critical opinion, you
will get a disproportional amount of criticism, hostility, and scrutiny
compared to men."

I disagree. The reality is that if anyone has a critical opinion and expresses
it online, you will get harassed. As a test, go on Reddit, pretend you are a
guy, and post a critical opinion in one of the gaming subreddits.

The problem is that the Internet has given everyone a voice, and a public
email address or twitter feed means anyone, with almost no effort, can send
you a message, and try to get to you.

"I've personally never heard of a man in the games industry getting rape
threats for having an opinion."

I have..and much worse.

"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."

Nobody likes criticism..and most peoples reaction is to get defensive..it
doesn't matter who is giving it.

"One of the consequences is that men are extremely sensitive to being
criticized by women"

Based on what evidence? Your friend saying it? I see no direct evidence in
your entire blog post besides hearsay.

"Women in the games industry get special treatment for being women, and your
life can be made easier by your looks"

This is a fact in any industry. Women (and men for that matter) that are
attractive get treated better (there have been numerous studies on this). To
change this would mean changing human nature..which isn't happening any time
soon.

"A look at the YouTube comments for her 2010 PAX East panel is stomach-
churning. A shocking number of them personally attack the women of Girlfight."

I will give you some advice: ignore Youtube comments. Trolls on the Internet
will say anything they can do destroy you and make you break down. It seems to
be working.

While we are on the topic, it is getting pretty scary how we are moving toward
mob Internet justice. Look at the number of people that were fired, had their
careers ruined, or were forced to step down due to mob mentality on the
Internet.

The ex-Mozilla CEO is a good example of this.

"I have yet to talk to a man who has had to call a police officer due to a
stalker, only to be told nothing can be done until they are physically
assaulted. "

Are you kidding? I know plenty of men that had to call the police about a
female stalker/ex-girlfriend and were told the EXACT same thing.

"Growing a thicker skin isn't the answer, nor is it a proper response.
Listening, and making the industry safer for the existence of visible women is
the best, and only, way forward."

Growing a thicker skin is the answer. Have you ever played any Xbox live game
online with a headset? What do you hear? Teenage boys calling each other the
worst names imaginable. I just turn it off and keep playing.

You are an adult (I presume) trying to change the gaming culture of teenagers
and trolls on the Internet (some of which aren't even located in the US). This
is futile and will most likely never change unless there are serious
restrictions put on the Internet, worldwide.

It sounds like you don't like the gaming culture. I don't like it either, but
it has little to do with men being sexist and more to do with trolls and
children harassing anyone online because it's easy.

The people that succeed learn to ignore the noise and concentrate on what
matters.

~~~
holyjaw
Easily one of the most tone-deaf responses I've ever seen to a legitimate
piece on sexism. My god.

------
iandanforth
I support and applaud the author. I will offer one negative reaction so that
if others wish to avoid this reaction, or preempt it, they will be aware.

Throughout the article I was looking for actionable suggestions, at the end I
was told that "Listening" was key. This plays directly into my stereotypes. In
other words, I was not surprised. The article had less impact because it
failed to offer a memorable and surprising suggestion to conclude.

Finally to avoid hypocrisy, I will offer an actionable suggestion. Create or
coopt a new label for such men and allow people who support you to
disassociate themselves from that group. For example "Alphas". Men who are
pre-release technology. Incomplete specimens. And dually, men who imagine
being big and strong and loud and dominant is what matters. I hate Alpha
types.

So f*ck Alphas and everything they stand for.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
The people who do this type of harassment aren't alphas. By definition, alphas
are renowned for their prowess. The people described in the article would be
omegas, most likely. Your hate is misguided.

At least be alpha enough to spell out the word "fuck".

------
chaostheory
> Myth: Everyone in the games industry experiences harassment. Women are just
> too sensitive about it.

This is not a myth. The difference is for whatever reason, the men being
harassed (due to race, sexual orientation, etc...) don't have the courage that
women have to come forward.

The video game industry is by and large dominated by adults who never grew up
in more ways than one, though the larger the company the less this is an issue
(though still a problem) due to the existence of HR and legal departments.

------
randunel
Gaming is full of rage, everywhere. Sore losers will always attack their
opponents. They usually stick to generic attacks, unless they know something
about you, when it gets specific. If you play a certain class, some insults
will contain class specific terms. If they roughly know your age, they will
either call you immature or too old to be alive. If they know where you're
from or your religion, they will use racist insults. If they know your gender,
they will use that to make their insults hurt you more.

This post reminded me of the there's-nothing-you-can-do-about-them "I want to
stick my long-necked giraffe up your fluffy white bunny"
[http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-
of-t...](http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-of-toontowns-
speedchat-or-blockchattm-from-disney-finally-arrives/) .

