No girl wins: three ways women unlearn their love of video games

[beschizza]

Protip for newly-signed up goobergators: the SIGHING DISAPPOINTMENT, in not less than 3000 words, is a shibboleth.

[Jabberwocky1]

OK. I suppose this isn’t a place for me, then. Carry on as you were.

[Missy_Pants]

If you weren’t looking for cookies why threaten to withdraw your support if we don’t listen and learn from you?

Why not listen to the women talking about their lived experiences? With gaming? With sexism in gaming, with harassment in gaming, with the portrayal of women in games? Why do we need to stop talking about our experiences to learn from you, a man, who wants to what exactly? Talk to us about our own experiences? Why don’t you listen and learn from us?

But no, if we don’t treat with you on your terms you’ll turn to GG… ok then, just go, because I have no cookies to give you to keep you here.

[Jabberwocky1]

I have neither asked you to stop talking, nor said that I ought to stop listening. I have asked that others listen as well.

My point - what I want - is not to silence, or even to disagree! - with anyone here. My point is that when this group silences others, as with the commenters above - including especially someone who has the power to block me on the thread - it weakens your, our, position.

I want very much for everything this article asks for to occur. I am trying to help that along by suggesting a more open approach in this community.

So no - I do not want your cookies. Or your approval. Or your approbation.
But I would prefer, for the sake of what we are ALL trying to accomplish in bringing about a more healthy gaming environment, that you also listen to those who oppose you, and that you also treat them with respect.

[Missy_Pants]

Word to the wise: siding with GG, even giving them the “benefit of the doubt” immediately eradicates any goodwill many of us would normally offer to a newbie.

And I will not ever listen or offer respect to GG, ever.

[anon73629133]

Oh Helloo Dr. Jabberwocky.

What brings you to this little Offworld colony?

@Jabberwocky1

A man (?) brings up a perspective that disagrees with the article, and tries to support it - and he is silenced … his position is, apparently, fundamentally unacceptable to site moderators.

Oh dear. That sounds dreadful. Whatever did he say?

@aPackOfWankers

As someone who devoted their youth to computers in the late 70s and early 80s, and having worked in the Gaming industry in the 80s and early 90s, and being an avid gamer and professional software engineer, I can say this.

Computer technology, the computer industry, and the gaming industry was built by men.

Well, that’s a bold statement. Trollingly False, but bold. Oh, you don’t agree with that, do you?

@Jabberwocky1

That dogmatic approach to social issues prevents real discussion on it - and, in support of Verse’s comments, blocking someone with whom they only disagree was a shameful thing for BoingBoing to do.

I enjoy video games, especially 4X strategy games like Civ V, and light-hearted adventures like King’s Quest.

I do so appreciate how you put these two sentences together. You know why, because someone has been missing from this article, and this thread, and I’ve struggled to find a good segway to. You guess who it is yet?

#Roberta Flipping Williams.

So creative she pioneered the entire genre of graphic adventures. In the 80s and 90s. So influential that Sociologist Laine Nooney, PhD, wrote a dissertation how Sierra On-Line changed the gaming landscape.

If aPackofWankers really was a gamedev in the 80s, then he’s old enough to have known about Williams, and should know better. Otherwise, his blanket statement looks like a bold attempt to write women OUT of gaming history.

Also, FYI, most of the final dismissive responses to Wankers came after he was banned.

http://img.pandawhale.com/post-63716-john-oliver-cheers-gif-imgur-t-7Tik.gif

[beschizza]

Assuming you’re not just trolling (in which case you’ve been quite successful), if you want some clues as to why your performance didn’t work out, here’s a few tips!

• Credential-waving means nothing when one is anonymous – it just suggests pomposity and self-regard.

• Your suggestion that if someone isn’t agreed with (or published here), they’re being censored or “silenced.” This is a hallmark of adolescents with large ethical convictions and little life experience.

• That sighing “it’s so sad” act. It’s satisfying, I know! But the position it signifies (let’s call it ‘steeply fingered’) is daft, not erudite. Also: you’re in a five day-old comment thread writing hundreds of words in a style redolent of midcentury political rhetoric, about the ideological flaws of other anonymous commenters. Speak not of what is sad.

• The commenter ban at the ‘heart of the matter’ was for a troll who wrote that women prefer to avoid hard work. One wonders what on earth could be gained holding them up as an undeserving victim of moderation, but you’re certainly entitled to stake out that ground if you like the look of it.

• The suggestion that opposing objectification is sex-negative, that gender essentialism is intrinsic to sex-positivity, etc. To put it politely: some of us have the education you claim to have.

I wonder if your frustration is actually that this was a long thread in which multiple viewpoints were represented without undue hostility? It often creates dissonant latecomer remarks about how awful it was that everyone was so brutally censored.

(For the record: as far as I can tell, 4 comments were taken down in this 290-comment thread, two of them on grounds of inappropriate language, one for an inappropriate remark about the author’s sister, and another by its own author)

[OKULTRA]

@dragonchild12

If you were actually committed to “gender equality”, you’d probably think stuff like arguing that raping women shouldn’t be illegal, which GamerGate’s most loved “feminist” has no problem with people say, was a bad thing.

As someone who identifies as individualist feminist, I have my disagreements with Sommers (I suppose you mean her, since while she isn’t the only GG-friendly feminist, she is likely the most “favorite”), but this sounds quite beyond the pale.

Where did she say that ?

[OKULTRA]

@SlightlyNormal

I wouldn’t call Transistor non-violent either, but I said “little focus on violence”. There’s a difference between combat being part of the gameplay and its violence being in focus, like in Doom or Dead Space.

I got that, I just couldn’t resist sticking up for poor robot… program… things

[PhasmaFelis]

@dragonchild12

This isn’t because they’re guys who are into a cartoon aimed at women, though. This is because their communities are filled and embrace sexist, racist asshats who harass and stalk people (including underage people), draw porn and flood it everywhere, make rape jokes at minors, and are all and all terrible people. Bronies have deserved their hatred pretty strongly.

Source please.

(Especially re: “filled with and embrace,” I don’t want to see one single person who fulfills each of your assertions who “obviously” represents the entire community.)

[codinghorror]

@beschizza

I wonder if your frustration is actually that this was a long thread in which multiple viewpoints were represented without undue hostility?

would read again.

We certainly need to move to a world beyond GameStop as a representation of what gaming is.

[OKULTRA]

I think you’re replying to the wrong person here. The “bronies community is full’o’pedos” was not my comment.’

Just saying to avoid confusion

[TobinL]

I think you mean to quote @dragonchild12 instead of @okayultra

[Elsa_K]

Thank you. You express much of my own feelings about this thread. I’m not “in” gamergate, but rather I support the aspect of gamergate that allows for other feminist voices to be heard within mainstream media and gaming press… a more positive feminist voice that can look at the good aspects of gaming (and yes, there are some). Right now, almost ALL feminist games criticism is being done by a very small group of very negative, like-minded feminists and the unfortunate reality is that anyone with other feminist beliefs (sex positive feminism primarily) is instantly labeled as a misogynist and silenced under threat of public shaming.

I was raised in the 70’s and always felt empowered by feminism and proudly called myself a feminist… until I was told that I had to be a victim and that if I would not label myself as a victim of men, then I was no longer welcome in the club of feminism.

I do believe that many of the issues within gaming could be resolved if the continuing context from the vocal feminists in gaming were less antagonistic towards men with the “war on women” headlines that seems to do little more than deter women from even trying gaming or becoming involved in gaming communities. The “war on women” rhetoric also silences men who support feminism by stereotyping them as misogynistic male gamers, and silences female gamers who don’t feel that there is a war on women in gaming.

Again, I believe there would be universal support within gaming for ways to fix in game harassment issues and in fact there are technical in game solutions increasingly offered (groups, ability to automatically mute those not in your group, options regarding blocking//muting, party chat, etc). The continued focus on the harassment of women in games rarely offers answers aside from “men must change” when in fact it is a small minority of men AND women who harass others (again, men and women) in online gaming. The continued feedback that “fixing harassment in gaming” derails the topic of the harassment of women in gaming is simply counter-productive.

At this point, I honestly don’t know if I’m a feminist or not. Like most of the population, I definitely believe in equality for all genders… but I don’t want men OR women to tell me what I have to wear, how I have to think or who I should vote for.

Like the OP… I don’t think that this type of forum is the right place for me. There seems to be a broader range of discussion of various aspects of feminism withing gaming communities than there is withing feminist communities.
(and it also seems that women are silenced less often in gaming communities than men are within feminist communities)

(and now I’m gonna go play Destiny… because after over 800 hours in the game, the most misogynistic comment I have received is “are you a female”… and on answering “yes” the answer was “ok, cool… and don’t revive me until you take out the Captain and the Dregs behind the box to my left”.)

[FoolishOwl]

@Jabberwocky1

Sex-positive feminism, indeed, is a branch of feminism that takes gender-essentialism as its core principle. Sex-positive feminism is not mainstream feminism, however, and so has been so maligned often enough that many progressives believe that theirs is the only manner of thinking about gender.

Sex-positive feminism, a popular current in contemporary progressive thought, asserts that a core principle of feminism is the right to one’s own sexual agency. This tends to put it at odds with gender essentialism, which tends to assume that sexuality conforms to static models of gender.

But nice try! Your diction made it sound almost as if you knew what you were talking about.

@Jabberwocky1

But I do not support the feminist orthodoxy of thought that has been demonstrated even in this thread of comments: a sex-positive feminist, Elsa_K, brings up an alternative female perspective, and is shouted down.

She claimed to be part of Gamergate, a group whose initiators and coordinators include self-identified fascists, which has terrorized women in the gaming industry for over a year now. And, by the way, Gamergate has a history of attacking even women who claim to support it, which makes it quite remarkable that a woman would have been a supporter of Gamergate for a long time, without somehow having noticed its hostility to women.

Come to think of it, the people behind Gamergate have a long history of inventing elaborate personas, of opponents and disinterested third parties. But usually you can recognize some inconsistencies, if you look carefully. #YourSlipIsShowing

But, if you want to express support for a movement that threatens to murder my friends, don’t expect me to be nice.

[Elsa_K]

Hmmmm… I have to laugh about your reference to me possibly being a male and not a female gamer! LOL! It’s like the “fake gamer girl” thing only now it’s the “fake feminist” thing.

My blog on Destructoid has been around for many, many years now and being an avid gamer I’ve been to PAX and there are the occasional photos of me floating around in pics with other gamers from those events. Yes… many of those from Destructoid have met me and can vouch for my age and gender (and I can describe menopause in great detail if you want! LOL!)

Unfortunately, due to illness, I’ve not been updating my blog much recently (though working on a new blog), nor have I been able to attend PAX.

[dragonchild12]

@PhasmaFelis

Source please.

(Especially re: “filled with and embrace,” I don’t want to see one single person who fulfills each of your assertions who “obviously” represents the entire community.)

How would you like me to fulfill this source, exactly? Like, what would be acceptable to you, just so I can deliver exactly that?

[dragonchild12]

@okayultra

As someone who identifies as individualist feminist, I have my disagreements with Sommers (I suppose you mean her, since while she isn’t the only GG-friendly feminist, she is likely the most “favorite”), but this sounds quite beyond the pale.

Where did she say that ?

She’s written for MRA websites that have openly had their founders and writers claim rape should be legal, and never in any way addressed, disagreed, or refuted this, and defended them before. She also is buddy-buddy with a guy who outright says that he hates lesbians, and has no problem with him doing so. She’s been happy friends with people who out trans women while claiming all trans women are sexual abusers. I’m not going to provide names to avoid backsearching, but if you’ve paid attention to her even in the SLIGHTEST you know exactly who I’m referring to, and you’re free to PM me.

[OKULTRA]

@FoolishOwl

She claimed to be part of Gamergate, a group whose initiators and coordinators include self-identified fascists, which has terrorized women in the gaming industry for over a year now. And, by the way, Gamergate has a history of attacking even women who claim to support it, which makes it quite remarkable that a woman would have been a supporter of Gamergate for a long time, without somehow having noticed its hostility to women.

Well, I received threats from both self-identified GG and self-identified "anti"GG, and there is quite some evidence that other women received threats of such nature from self-professed "anti"GG, so perhaps it would be worthwhile to recognize that all “vocal” sides in this, well, confrontation have some pretty disturbed (and disturbing) people

Frankly, I find the “anti” threats to be slightly more unpleasant because, those people are supposed to be feminist allies or something

[OKULTRA]

@dragonchild12

you know exactly who I’m referring to, and you’re free to PM me.

I don’t think I have PM privileges yet, but I’ll try