Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

[Cancer]

Actually most of that Misandrist stuff comes from a particularly nasty branch of 2nd wave Feminist Separatists, Now called TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists). They are second wavers that see Misogyny in everything. The right wing has used that minor branch of Feminism to Tar all Feminists.

First Wave Feminists were all pretty darn welcoming of all women no matter what their history. Most Third Wavers are actually even more welcoming than the first wavers were.

My first encounters with anyone who claimed to speak in a feminist voice were with those in that particularly unpleasant 2nd Wave segment. That was in 1974, I was 18, and starting my freshman year at U of Washington, and I'd been living on US military installations since I was 12. I kind of realized that I had not seen the full spectrum of a lot of voices during my upbringing, but otherwise had very little clue.

 

The UW student paper that first quarter had a rather strange set-up. The paper came out four days a week (Tuesday through Friday), and there was a rotating editorship for the four days, with a different extremist editor grinding their own particular axe each day. The four groups were the way out there extreme Mexican student organization, the way out there extreme Black student organization, an uneasy cooperation between a couple of hard core communist student organizations (it was fun to watch when the (Stalinist) Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade had one of their periodic fallings-out with the (Trotskyite) Young Socialist Alliance, but I digress), and then someone speaking shrilly in that extreme 2nd-wave feminist separatist voice. I ought to have inferred from the context of being in there with the rest of that editorial rotation that the women's writer was just as whacked out as the others, but it took a while for that perpective to dawn on me.

 

Anyway, for the kid who was looking for some voices that one did not encounter at all on the Air Force SAC base, it was kind of like drinking from a fire hose. Being from a rather sheltered (in this sense) environment, and an utterly clueless absurdly white anglo straight male (I have posted this before on these boards ... not only am I descended from a passenger of the Mayflower, I am descended from the only passenger of the Mayflower to be subsequently executed for homicide) ... there wasn't a whole lot in those editorial pages that I could even parse, let alone sympathize with. It was all [understatement]a bit too strident[/understatement]. I did realize that the individual writers (who were, of course, also students, and whose writing styles were not, shall we say, fully polished) were unlikely to be fully representative voices for their movements, but then tripping over my second quarter of calculus and getting the only C of my academic career shocked me into doing more studying and less editorial reading.

 

Anyway, it took the better part of a decade for me to look again for voices claiming to be feminist, at which point I learned that the militant separatist view was not necessarily representative of the whole movement. Life is better now.

[Lawnmower Boy]

There are a couple of problems that seem to occur with the most extreme elements of any movement.

1)  They tend to be the ones who get the most press.

2)  Because they draw attention - in spite of the fact that it's negative attention - the majority of participants (who want attention drawn to their issue(s)) don't renounce them / do anything to separate themselves from the radicals.

3)  If the "silent majority" in a movement do nothing about the radicals that give their movement a bad name, then they (the silent majority) are largely irrelevant.  A small but vocal minority will cause the tarnishing (and possibly the eventual collapse) of a well-intentioned movement.

 

Of course, the challenge is this:  in a free society, what CAN you do to reign in the most radical elements of a movement without infringing upon their rights?  Simply attempting to distance the majority of the movement from these radicals probably won't draw enough media attention to be successful...So what's left?

 

I don't think that this is precisely the issue. Just to be helpful, let me frame it with medicalising. Nothing helps a conversation like tellingn participants that they're crazy and need professional help!

 

The issue, as I see it, is that attention-seeking is free-standing behaviour, a common aspect of the well-recognised etiology of bipolar disorder, specifically bipolar mania. Since it co-occurs with paranoia, in its correctly used sense of an elevated sense of salience, this attention-seeking is associated with outrage and a perception of being oppressed and held back in life by others.

 

All of this we should understand to be free of ideological content. A paranoid will interpret other's actions as hostile, see conspiracies everywhere, and develop a morbid fear of, for example, additives in their food even while happily abusing drugs and alcohol. Take this particular fear a step further. Does it sound like the actions of a "hippy?" Of course it does. Not because the victim is ideologically committed to a comprehensive programme of counter-cultural leftism, but rather because the hippy lifestyle is the easiest way of enacting their paranoia. 

 

In the example, I am just picking on the counter-culture, It should be apparent that there are multiple agendas that will support paranoia. Feminism, which starts from the obvious fact that our society has many patriarchal elements that hold women back, is an obvious one. (But so is Dominionism! And old-line, patriarchal Marxism! And many other social commitments.)

 

The problem, when you get right down to it, is excruciatingly simple. There are people out there who are what the old, judgmental language would have called "raving maniacs." They are ill, and because they lack insight into their condition, are unaware of it. Instead, in a desperate search for peace and acceptance, they thrust their paranoia into the public sphere by attention-seeking behaviour. You can either avoid this kind of behaviour, retreating from the public sphere to "cultivate your own garden," or accept it as part of the human condition and approach it therapeutically.

 

The latter approach might seem a great deal more humane, but it will lead to unpleasant conversations and many accusations of being patronising, Professional therapists have a hard enough time being therapists! Amateurs like you or me will put our foot in it one foot at a time, step by step. The former approach sounds cruel, but every time you see a homeless person, you see a person from whom life has gently withdrawn in hapless resignation. There are a lot of them, and many, many stories of gradual social isolation hiding behind them. In general, people ask for help, in their misguided way, and we offer them alcohol and tobacco, because that's all we can get them to take; and if they're falling down drunk all the time, they won't be much trouble for the rest of us. Mostly. (They won't ask for amphetamines, because that urge comes with paranoia.)

[Cygnia]

Numbers Don’t Lie: Comic Con Sexual Harassment Is a Huge Problem

 

 

“Out of all respondents, 59 percent said they felt sexual harassment was a problem in comics and 25 percent said they had been sexually harassed in the industry. The harassment varied: while in the workplace or at work events, respondents were more likely to suffer disparaging comments about their gender, sexual orientation, or race. At conventions, respondents were more likely to be photographed against their wishes. Thirteen percent reported having unwanted comments of a sexual nature made about them at conventions—and eight percent of people of all genders reported they had been groped, assaulted, or raped at a comic convention.”

[Old Man]

Eight percent?  Jesus.

[薔薇語]

Deleted

[Ranxerox]

I agree with you about the pedophilia thing.  I don't know how many times I've seen toddlers needing help and found myself worrying that if I went over and helped them people would mistake me for a pervert.  Still, why post it in this thread?  It seems more like something for the general rant thread or maybe a thread of it's own.

[SKJAM!]

Raising awareness of sexual harassment at SDCC: https://www.yahoo.com/movies/sexual-harassment-at-comic-con-in-the-spotlight-93048198212.html

[Cygnia]

Yet again...

 

The nightmare is over: They're not coming for your games

 

Recently Gamespot Editor Carolyn Petit, speaking with me on a panel at the GaymerX2 convention in San Francisco, recounted a private message she received in response to a review of Gone Home.

 

"I got this message from a reader and it was pretty well-worded, and well thought-out … but what he was saying is, essentially, ‘well, Carolyn, you shouldn’t have given Gone Home such a high score because if game designers see games like Gone Home getting so much acclaim then we’re not going to have traditional games anymore!’"

 

Time and again, this leitmotif of gamer-speak arises: the idea that someone, somewhere is going to take your games away. A "terror dream" that sees us reliving the paternalist past and lashing out at all criticism in hopes of keeping the grasping hands of the censor at bay.

[Cygnia]

[bLEEP]

 

Cosplay victim left bloody in street, says Comic-Con attendee

[Sociotard]

 

 

He was charged with sexual conduct with a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

That's it? Unacceptable.

[Ranxerox]

That's it? Unacceptable.

 

Those may just be opening charges to keep the suspect from going anywhere while they see how good of a case they have on more serious charges.

[Cancer]

Time and again, this leitmotif of gamer-speak arises: the idea that someone, somewhere is going to take your games away. A "terror dream" that sees us reliving the paternalist past and lashing out at all criticism in hopes of keeping the grasping hands of the censor at bay.

Speaking as someone who only plays turn-based strategy games at home on machines that will never again be connected to the net ... They do, in fact, take your games away. It is not censorship, however; it is the trend to only make games that have continual always-on ability to shove whatever crap the game company wants onto your box, and hopefully into your head. It is coercive marketing, not politics. When those old machines finally die, you won't be able to get games of that sort again. Kind of like how no one makes old-style board wargames any more (see the famous "Farewell to Hexes" essay). Sexism (anti, or Neandertal bitter-enders in its favor) won't have much to do with that, except insofar as current and subsequent games in development, for reasons of marketability to the broader buying public, become less anchored in the sociopathic adolescent male worldview.

[Ranxerox]

http://www.vice.com/read/notallroleplayers-a-history-of-rapey-dungeon-masters

[Cygnia]

http://marysueproblems.tumblr.com/post/38404910157/on-not-like-other-girls

[Tasha]

http://www.vice.com/read/notallroleplayers-a-history-of-rapey-dungeon-masters

Since the board truncated your link. Here's the headline and First Paragraph of that Article.  BTW I do know of women IRL who suffered from similar situations, from creepy GM's and Creepy Gaming groups +GM.

 

NSFW because of Language.

 

#NotAllRolePlayers: A History of Rapey Dungeon Masters

 

Lucy was starting to hold back tears. We sat in her living room, my iPhone working overtime as my tape recorder, and she was so pissed off it looked like she might cry. She was telling me about our former Dungeon Master, who had exploited our Dungeons & Dragons game to live out his sad-sack fantasy after she'd already flatly rejected his advances just weeks before. "I really didn't want my character to go down that route and have fake sex with this character," Lucy explained to me on that sunny afternoon. But the adventure "didn't get anywhere else unless I let it get more and more sexualized. Once we went down that path that was the only thing that got me rewards in the game, if I kept doing those things. Or at least allowing it to happen to my character and not being like, 'F--- that shit' and walking away." 

 

"Lucy" is an alias, by the way. 

 

Sporting a mousy face and thick-rimmed glasses, Lucy is the kind of woman simultaneously ignored, marginalized, and fetishized by the prototypical geek. She's attractive but doesn't seem unattainable, possessing that "approachable" look that seems almost tailor-made to appeal to dorky guys with gutter-dwelling self-esteems. Lucy's been a dork for most of her life: She was first introduced to D&D by friends in high school, and in college she was an officer in a video game club where she coordinated events.

 

--- Chase the link above for the full article

http://www.vice.com/read/notallroleplayers-a-history-of-rapey-dungeon-masters

[Cygnia]

That happened to me in college.  I put up with it because I was naive and already brow-beaten to try to be like "one of the guys".  Nevermind the fact the GM was a hypocrite who found nothing wrong with himself playing lusty scantily clad whip wielding elf women, but thought it was an aberration for me to play a male bard (and then proceeded to forcibly change his sex and have him raped).

 

Yeah, not happy about that.

[Ranxerox]

That happened to me in college.  I put up with it because I was naive and already brow-beaten to try to be like "one of the guys".  Nevermind the fact the GM was a hypocrite who found nothing wrong with himself playing lusty scantily clad whip wielding elf women, but thought it was an aberration for me to play a male bard (and then proceeded to forcibly change his sex and have him raped).

 

Yeah, not happy about that.

 

But you stayed with the hobby anyway.  Wow. I could totally see that driving a person off.

 

Thanks for staying.

[Hermit]

That happened to me in college.  I put up with it because I was naive and already brow-beaten to try to be like "one of the guys".  Nevermind the fact the GM was a hypocrite who found nothing wrong with himself playing lusty scantily clad whip wielding elf women, but thought it was an aberration for me to play a male bard (and then proceeded to forcibly change his sex and have him raped).

 

Yeah, not happy about that.

 

 

I wouldn't be either if I were you (Or, for that matter, if I were in the group). My sympathies, I've had jackass DMs before, but nothing to that magnitude

[Sociotard]

I once participated in a game (at a con, not a group of friends), where one revolting 14 year old decided his character would kidnap and rape somebody.  The game master said okay, your character does whatever you want him to.  And then everybody else at the table worked together to stop his character and turn him in to the police. And the player wasn't invited to join any other games.

 

I hope that didn't come across as "not all men" or whatever. My point was that it wasn't just the creepy GM that was at fault there. Everyone else at the table needs to react the right way.  I'd like to think my reaction would be to have my character do terrible things to that nasty Mary Sue.

[Cygnia]

 

How Dungeons and Dragons is endorsing the darkest parts of the RPG community

 

[Enforcer84]

Not Geek Community per se:

 

Trolls: Now Available on Amazon Book Reviews

 

Essentially, it's using book reviews to spew political/Sexist views and gosh if it doesn't usually target women. 

 

As an aside, I've seen politically motivated reviews in the music section where one fan was OUTRAGED that a band dared to betray themselves as having a political side. Not their music, but the video for one of the songs "Alienated half their audience." 

 

I think it's perfectly possible to enjoy music or art and revile the artist if you find out they're reprehensible to your way of thinking. Boycotting them is fine as well. 

...aaaand I've gone further on the tangent than I planned. 

[Enforcer84]

Oh and as to the creeper DM/Player syndrome - I was in a few groups that it was...blatant; It made me uncomfortable and I left both groups. The girls in question both married the guys who brought them in but one of the marriages didn't last 3 years The other seems still strong. 

[Cygnia]

Yeah, I'm lucky I'm in a 3.5 ed D&D group now that, when the GM makes a tentacle rape joke about his critical fumble chart, I can say "No, not cool" and he's good with it.

[Cygnia]

http://beenbettercomic.tumblr.com/post/93534257276/kevin-brueck-comic-con-villain

[Cygnia]