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Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities


Tasha

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Rose, did you read the two articles? Here's what the gripe is:

 

1. Gamasutra publishes an article.

2. A guy(s) writes an email to Intel complaining about the article.

3. Intel writes an email back to the guy indicating that they are pulling their advertising from Gamasutra.

4. It turns out the guy(s) they responded to is a vile scumbag(s).

 

The beef is that Intel is therefore taking the side of the vile scumbag(s).

 

Which is probably not entirely accurate.

 

The original article's tone was very negative. It wasn't as simple as saying "Oh, hey, let's break out of those stereotypes." The article itself went on the offensive, instead of arguing from a position of logic. The response by the group of scumbags was way beyond the pale of human decency, but I've seen no indication that Intel was aware of that at the time they responded to the complaints. More likely, they saw the complaints, read the article and judged its tone counterproductive to their marketing, and pulled sponsorship.

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Rose, did you read the two articles? Here's what the gripe is:

 

 

Let's take a moment right here and hash something out: what TWO articles are you referring to? The quote in my above post has a link to only ONE article as best I can tell. Is there a second one embedded in that link that I am unaware of? 

 

La Rose. 

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Rose, 

 

(snipped by La Rose)

 

The original article's tone was very negative. It wasn't as simple as saying "Oh, hey, let's break out of those stereotypes." The article itself went on the offensive, instead of arguing from a position of logic. The response by the group of scumbags was way beyond the pale of human decency, but I've seen no indication that Intel was aware of that at the time they responded to the complaints. More likely, they saw the complaints, read the article and judged its tone counterproductive to their marketing, and pulled sponsorship.

 

 

This seems to go along with the second reason I posted. Intel wants to preserve their image and having it be associated with any controversy, even if it is 'on the right side' is still going to cause headaches. Headaches they probably don't want to deal with. 

 

La Rose. 

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Trouble at the Koolaid Point

 

 

This month is the 10-year anniversary of my first online threat. I thought it was a one-off, then. Just one angry guy. And it wasn’t really THAT bad. But looking back, it was the canary in the coal mine… the first hint that if I kept on this path, it would not end well. And what was that path? We’ll get to that in a minute.

 

Later I learned that the first threat had nothing to do with what I actually made or said in my books, blog posts, articles, and conference presentations. The real problem — as my first harasser described — was that others were beginning to pay attention to me. He wrote as if mere exposure to my work was harming his world. 

 

But here’s the key: it turned out he wasn’t outraged about my work. His rage was because, in his mind, my work didn’t deserve the attention. Spoiler alert: “deserve” and “attention” are at the heart.

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Let's take a moment right here and hash something out: what TWO articles are you referring to? The quote in my above post has a link to only ONE article as best I can tell. Is there a second one embedded in that link that I am unaware of? 

 

La Rose. 

 

There's one posted prior, that has a link to the article that was on Gizmodo. That's why I mentioned two. It gives more info than just the one posted. So, wasn't being snarky there, just checking. Looking  back, I can't  find the post now. Heck, it may have been in a different thread?

 

Anyway, I think we agree the complaint against Intel isn't particularly well-founded.

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Interesting, though he's skimped on the history of board wargaming in the 1950s and 1960s (not surprising, considering his focus on RPGs which only date to the early 1970s). There were a couple of articles in SPI's house organ, Moves, on that part of board wargaming history ... I think those came in the mid or late 1970s, early in my withdrawal from the hobby for college/gradschool. There was a "warring clubs" phase in there circa 1960, but unfortunately I remember not much more than that from reading that stuff 30+ years ago. I don't recall any mention of women either way, or gender in any form in the articles that I recall, but it's been a while since I've seen the article. ;). Nothing like feminist thinking had penetrated my mind at the time and so it would not have occurred to me to wonder about those issues, or retain any information relevant to that which might have been present.

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I really find this article encouraging.  It sounds like Facebook has finally started to see the light on this issue and is starting to devise a strategy for dealing with harassment.  This is good because Facebook is an industry leader and what it does will copied by other social media platforms.

 

Now, Facebook still has a long way to go on planning and implementing as anti-harassment policy, and whatever policy is finally settles on is inevitably going to be weak sauce.  However, I think weak sauce is fine.  There is a saying that door locks don't exist to keep out crooks, who can bypass the locks easily enough if they are determined; locks on door exist to keep honest men honest.  Right now the internet needs barriers to keep non-misogynist, non-sociopaths from becoming misogynist sociopaths.  It needs measures to deter otherwise sane men, who have had a bad day, from taking out their anger and frustration on some woman they don't even know just because her bitter ex-boyfriend says she is a slut.

 

So, while the weak sauce measures that Facebook is likely to come up and Twitter and other social media platforms may in time adopt won't stop the true monsters roaming the web, at least they may prevent these monsters from raising armies to do their bidding.  Then the monsters will be standing out all by themselves without there armies to hide behind, and there won't be any doubt who and what they are.

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