Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

[Sociotard]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

So, this woman has Geek credentials that check (MIT graduate, thesis involved video games) and is doing something impressive to battle the old gender lines:

 

Female kicker to break NFL gender barrier

 

Granted, she'll only be in the tryouts, so no guaranteees of breaking the big barrier, but that would be pretty cool.

[Cygnia]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

So, this woman has Geek credentials that check (MIT graduate, thesis involved video games) and is doing something impressive to battle the old gender lines:

 

Female kicker to break NFL gender barrier

 

Granted, she'll only be in the tryouts, so no guaranteees of breaking the big barrier, but that would be pretty cool.

 

Just keep her away from the Jets...

[Cygnia]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

[h=1]'Star Wars' Needs a New Approach to Gender—Not Just More Women[/h]

[Cygnia]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

From Dr. NerdLove: Gaming While Female

[Cygnia]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

[h=1]Fair Game: Sexism in Gaming 2012: Anger & Intellect[/h][h=1]Fair Game: A Belated Introduction[/h]

[Tasha]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

A woman's view of the way Women are depicted in Gaming Materials (esp Fantasy)

 

http://www.gamingaswomen.com/posts/2013/02/men-wear-armour-women-wear-sexy-time-lingerie/

[Enforcer84]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

It's slow coming, but Guild Wars 2 at least 2 of the races lack dimorphism. The Charr (playable race) and the Ogres, you can only tell the females from their voices (and it Charr's case, eyelashes.) The other races are relatively standard stuff.

[matrix3]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

A woman's view of the way Women are depicted in Gaming Materials (esp Fantasy)

 

http://www.gamingaswomen.com/posts/2013/02/men-wear-armour-women-wear-sexy-time-lingerie/

 

I followed a link from there to the article Because They Don’t Wear "I'm a Molester" Con Badge Flags.

[gmurie]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Interesting thread. I have to say, that as a father of girls (a pair of eight year olds now) I am a bit ambivalent about taking them to cons, getting them all passionate and interested in gaming or comics or whatever, and then have them suffer harassment like that when they're older.

 

I mean, it's not like they have a choice. The nerdiness is genetic and bone deep in both of them. One of them made herself a Wonder Woman headband, and I've only a very limited amount of DC media around the place. I have no idea where she got the idea in her head from. When I told them I was going to go to a science fiction convention where people dress up in costumes, they both insisted that they wanted to come with and dress up as weeping angels.

 

I was so proud.... But I left them with my parents because it was one of those boozy party type cons. Not many kids there at all.

 

I've been witness to some shocking stuff at cons. I just don't want to be put in the position of beating down some neckbeard for harassing one of my girls.

 

EDIT TO ADD: WisCON in Madison, which bills itself as a Feminist Con, and is home of the Tiptree Awards, is a notably good con to be a woman at for obvious reasons.

[Barwickian]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

It's 100 years since HG Wells' Little Wars was published, bringing wargaming into the parlour. Wargaming, of course, spawned roleplaying.

 

Little Wars isn't its full title.

 

Little Wars is a set of rules for playing with toy soldiers' date=' written by H. G. Wells in 1913. Its full title is Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books.[/quote']

 

Well, at least the forward-thinking Wells accepted girls into the hobby he created. So long as they were "the more intelligent sort" who liked "boys' games and books".

 

What does it say of our hobby that the discriminatory attitudes of a century ago still seem so prevalent?

[Lucius]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

I wish I were surprised to learn that females in online games take more abuse than males. To borrow the metaphor, all monkeys get poo flung at them, but the female monkeys get a lot more poo. I'm glad someone took the trouble to try to confirm that objectively.

 

I think the ideal would be to eliminate poo flinging altogether, but just cutting the level females have to deal with down to what males do would be an improvement.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I don't have a solution, I just have a palindromedary

[Zeropoint]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Well, at least the forward-thinking Wells accepted girls into the hobby he created. So long as they were "the more intelligent sort" who liked "boys' games and books".

 

What does it say of our hobby that the discriminatory attitudes of a century ago still seem so prevalent?

 

Perhaps I'm being overly charitable to the late Mr. Wells, but I'd read that as "the more intelligent sort of girl who knows better than to be satisfied with the stuff our society tries to feed their gender."

[Cancer]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Wells was a dystopian.

[Markdoc]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Perhaps I'm being overly charitable to the late Mr. Wells' date=' but I'd read that as "the more intelligent sort of girl who knows better than to be satisfied with the stuff our society tries to feed their gender."[/quote']

 

I think the part of the title stating "boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty" is also a hint that the title was not meant to taken in the spirit of serious gender-balance enquiry

Anyway, Wells did have (for his time) a pretty enlightened view of male/female roles and supported female suffrage (and also female access to birth control), so I think your guess is correct.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Wells was a dystopian.

 

Actually for most of his life, he was positively giddy about the future: he only turned sour in his old age, when he came to the conclusion that history was not running in the direction he had hoped. It's said he wanted the epitaph on his grave to read "I told you so. You damned fools."

 

cheers, Mark

[Tasha]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Here's a new article on the Penny Arcade Blog.

 

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/women-in-games-our-role-in-promoting-violence-and-diversity-of-creation-gdc

 

The detractors in the comment section display their ignorance quite well.

 

I am starting to think that as the PA guys (AKA Gabe and Tycho) mature, have wives and children. That perhaps they are really giving some of their attitudes a very hard look. They seem to have been moving toward seeing how some of their attitudes might be bad when seen from the viewpoints of Wives and daughters.

[Barwickian]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

The Fake Geek Girl exposed:

 

Maybe there is no fake geek girl. Maybe it's just a product of the deeply rooted sexism in geek culture. Maybe she's just a manifestation of the insecurities about the opposite sex. I mean, why else on God's green Earth would anyone pretend to read Aqua Man comics?

 

[Barwickian]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

I am starting to think that as the PA guys (AKA Gabe and Tycho) mature' date=' have wives and children. That perhaps they are really giving some of their attitudes a very hard look. They seem to have been moving toward seeing how some of their attitudes might be bad when seen from the viewpoints of Wives and daughters.[/quote']

 

Any specific examples, or is that a general feeling? I haven't read PA since the dickwolves.

[Tasha]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Any specific examples' date=' or is that a general feeling? I haven't read PA since the dickwolves.[/quote']

 

General feeling. I forgot about the dickwolves comic. They are American guys and sometimes find very inappropriate things funny at times. They sometimes make huge mistakes. I guess I am willing to forgive them. If it becomes part of a larger pattern, yeah I'll drop PA like a hot potato.

[Markdoc]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

General feeling. I forgot about the dickwolves comic. They are American guys and sometimes find very inappropriate things funny at times. They sometimes make huge mistakes. I guess I am willing to forgive them. If it becomes part of a larger pattern' date=' yeah I'll drop PA like a hot potato.[/quote']

 

The PA guys (at least the comic persona) are rude and obnoxious: it's their shtick. They're also pretty funny (at least to me) most of the time.

I have to admit I never got the outrage over the dickwolves comment, though: most of it seemed to be the usual internet ragestorm over .... something. None of the posters I saw on the topic were very clear on precisely what - just that it was terrible.

 

cheers,Mark

[Barwickian]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

The PA guys (at least the comic persona) are rude and obnoxious: it's their shtick. They're also pretty funny (at least to me) most of the time.

I have to admit I never got the outrage over the dickwolves comment, though: most of it seemed to be the usual internet ragestorm over .... something. None of the posters I saw on the topic were very clear on precisely what - just that it was terrible.

 

From memory, they'd made some kind of a rape gag. Somone called them out on it in the comments. Their response was dismissive at best, if not downright rude (the kind of thing you see on almost every geek site where someone calls someone else out on an -ism) - and the ragestorm broke. They made the dickwolves strip at the height of the ragestorm.

 

All of this was before the question of women and minority representation in geek culture became a major issue last year. There were some people standing up and making points, but you'd pretty much to go looking for the issue (Bankuei's Deeper into the Game blog was my starter; he had many links to follow and read, and I did - I found it quite an eyeopener).

 

The main issue for me was their response to the criticism - they became more entrenched and belligerent, and used their hefty voice and army of fans to mock their critics. I just didn't like the vibe there any more. I didn't like that they were encouraging people to shout down those who wanted to try and be more inclusive. Not a matter of forgiving or protesting or anything; I simply stopped enjoying my visits to their site. That it coincided with a particularly busy period in my life didn't help either.

 

If the atmosphere has changed since then, I'll take another dip into the PA waters - though I scarcely have time to follow daily webcomics these days (I'm way behind on PvP and Evil Inc, which would be my first ports of call when time permits).

[Cygnia]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

They also defended a Kickstarter for a tentacle rape card game last year too, if I recall correctly.

[Markdoc]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

From memory' date=' they'd made some kind of a rape gag. Somone called them out on it in the comments. Their response was dismissive at best, if not downright rude (the kind of thing you see on almost every geek site where someone calls someone else out on an -ism) - and the ragestorm broke. They made the dickwolves strip at the height of the ragestorm.[/quote']

 

The dickwolves commentwas the rape gag (except it wasn't, really, but a side comment peripheral to the actual gag, which was about how quests are in MMOs are designed).

 

The main issue for me was their response to the criticism - they became more entrenched and belligerent' date=' and used their hefty voice and army of fans to mock their critics. I just didn't like the vibe there any more. I didn't like that they were encouraging people to shout down those who wanted to try and be more inclusive. Not a matter of forgiving or protesting or anything; I simply stopped enjoying my visits to their site. That it coincided with a particularly busy period in my life didn't help either. [/quote']

 

Fair enough.From what I read, it was an issue that reflects no particular credit on anybody concerned: the PA guys were attacked in fairly direct and rude language and they reacted in exactly the same vein. In general, though, I haven't perceived PA to be sexist or other -ist (though the characters frequently are - especially Gabe - they are also ridiculed for those attitudes).

 

I'm still really no wiser as to what provoked this particular ragestorm (and obviously I'm not the only one: the interwebz have plenty of "WTF was that all about?" threads on this issue.) The closest I can come is that the made-up word "dickwolves" apparently touched some sort of nerve. Anyway, peripheral issue, I guess.

 

cheers, Mark

[Guest Celt]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

Article: Online Misogynists Are Not Fringe Characters

 

It does amaze me what people think is okay to say online, which just goes to support Penny Arcade's Internet F***wad Theory, even when they aren't anonymous. NSFW link

[Tasha]

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

 

It does amaze me what people think is okay to say online, which just goes to support Penny Arcade's Internet F***wad Theory, even when they aren't anonymous. NSFW link

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/02/18

NSFW (Language, they drop a ton of F-bombs)Blog post talking about the a proposed new version of GIFT

 

They talked about the GIFT(Greater Internet Frackwad Theory) and how they got an email that attemped to modify it to make it more accurate.

 

The proposed new version is Normal Person - Consequences + Audience = Total Frackwad

 

I really think that this is actually more accurate than the original. The reason that people IRL don't act the way they do in Online Communities is because of the consequences for doing so. Anonymity tends to remove consequences from the equation, but seeing as there are communities that still have Anonymity and aren't the cesspools that other Online communties are (ie Hero Boards). It's obvious to me that clear consequences (ie being banned) prevent the bad behavior.

 

Online games are afraid of using the Permaban because they are part of a company selling a game (usually with a monthly Subscription). Permabanning players reduces your bottom line and also potentially opens you up to lawsuits from the "players" who were banned. So games like WoW try to not permanently ban players, so they will Suspend accounts instead of banning the account. The problem is that the worst offenders don't see this as much of a deterrent and after the 4th or 5th suspension (that they can get reversed by complaining to Customer service). The offender just sees suspensions as a weak joke.