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The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry
An anonymous reader writes: Brianna Wu, leader of a game development studio, has an article exposing the constant harassment of women in the games industry. She says, "I'm not writing this piece to evoke your sympathy. I'm writing to share with you what prominent, successful women in the industry experience, in their own words." She goes through the individual stories of several women targeted by this vitriol, and tries to figure out why it happens. Quoting: "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. ... This is why women are socialized to carefully dance around these issues, disagreeing with men in an extremely gentle manner. Not because women are nicer creatures than men. But because our very survival can depend on it. ... 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."
It isn't only women who dance around issues when socializing with the other sex. Men gets very soft around women. If you think they have a harassing attitude you should see how men treat other men.
How do you defend yourself against accusations like that as a man? We are extremely sensitive to being criticized by women, can you really say thats not true without becoming another "point of proof" that they have?
Well, the most obvious step is to distinguish between "That's not true of me" and "That's not true". The first statement(while not always accurate) is much easier to confirm or deny. Plus, you aren't immediately put in the position of having to 'win' the debate in order to lay out your own position. If you immediately conflate population-level complaints with personal complaints, you end up taking on a markedly larger and more challenging position.
It may also be true that you suspect the harassment to be the work of a vocal and dedicated minority(and it would actually be rather interesting to see what the logs say about troll distribution in various internet locations) rather than a general thing; but you still gain nothing by tying the desire to defend yourself with the desire to defend a population.
Ya I think the problem is that forums bring out people who say some truly terrible things, and there isn't really much you can do about it. They say stuff to men too - but it's more death threats than sexist, and they say racist things to (or about) blacks and jews, muslims, latinos, and the chinese too.
The perils of anonymity I suppose.
It's not like it isn't a valid concern that people are out saying these things, but jews and blacks essentially face the same problem: if you go and look at a few hundred or a few thousand internet comments on any post there will be a couple of things that are basically just crazy people rambling. Unfortunately you don't know when random crazy people rambling on forums are actually a threat (if ever), and that they exist and want to say those things at all is a bit of an existential threat to your general day to day existence.
There isn't really an obvious prescription. You can educate people all you want about not saying offensive things, but a small handful of people will continue to say offensive things because they're trying to be offensive. And the anonymity of the internet lets you say both unpopular things which are valid, and unpopular things which are just nonsense.
You don't bother. You have no obligation to respond to her complaints if you don't feel like it.
Why does she get to stereotype men? Why do women get to put all their problems on men? When men do this, we're misogynistic. When women do this, well, men need to be more sensitive.
I think you have a point, but I also think you're confusing two issues.
She may or may not be making a valid generalization. I haven't read her article, so I can't say. But issue #1 is whether or not her complaint is worth considering.
Issue #2 is whether or not it's hypocritical for a women to paint men with a broad brush. But that issue can be treated entirely separately from issue #1.
And seeing the reactions so far not much is going to change about this shit. Disappointingly few people are even willing to entertain the possibility that the story might actually be true. Only coming up with excuses, bogus counter-examples ("I'm a guy who knows some women and I've never seen this happen") or just outright hatred and scorn. Way to go guys!
I've had the misfortune of working with many ex-videogame developers in my line of work. These people were basically uncivilized and reminded me of the mindset of what LAN parties were like back in the 90s when I was a teenager. Racism, sexism, ageism, profanity, and behavior that made you embarrassed to be around them in public. That kind of thing was funny when I was 16, but we were all immature then. It's very disturbing to see adults carry on like that.
Don't get me wrong, that industry has also created some very hard-working, kind people that I feel truly blessed to have had the fortune to work with. But those types are hard to come by, and the out of control manchild is all too common. A few of the most vitriolic, passive-aggressive trolls I've known were former EA prodigies (their words, along with every other kind of self-adulation you can think of) and they absolutely thought they walked on water. They'd show up to work drunk, or high, and brag to everyone about how much weed they smoked or how they partied all night. There was no self control and it spilled over into mistreating their peers.
There's a very sharp divide between the kind of people that go into games programming and all other programmers, and it's entirely about maturity, and at least in my experience it's uniquely American.
I'll admit I was a little relieved after actually reading the article. I assumed it was talking about harassment of male game developers towards female coworkers, which would have really surprised me. I've worked in the industry for over fifteen years, and I've never even heard of any sort of sexism toward the women that were employed alongside me. It simply wouldn't have been tolerated at the places I've worked, so far as I know, and that's a good thing. While the programming department was, of course, largely male, the other departments (art, design, writing, production) were more evenly split. Everyone I've known has valued talent and hard work, and gender was pretty much an afterthought, at least so far as I could tell. Then again, I'm a guy, so I'm probably not quite as attuned to that sort of thing.
In fact, the article seems to be mostly about women (largely in the gaming press) interacting with the still-all-too-ugly disposition of the anonymous hoards of gaming fans that interact with them. That made a bit more sense to me, unfortunately, as such women are by nature already public figures, and will probably attract a lot more bile. Let's face it. People on the internet, including (especially?) gamers, are not only sexist, they're racist, homophobic, and unbelievably cruel at time. I care a lot about the gaming culture and community, and it pains me to admit this. There's a shocking disconnect between what would be acceptable in real life versus what's said online. I'd imagine very few of those idiots would ever have the courage to say those things to someone's face.
The only way to deal with this is absolute zero tolerance policies, at least on forums (literal or otherwise) that you have any control over. There's simply no excuse for this sort of behavior. The internet could really stand to collectively grow up a little, and realize that being anonymous shouldn't give you a free license to be an asshat. Frankly, I don't think that "normal" people turn into foul-mouth talking assholes when online and anonymous. My feeling is that they were assholes to begin with, but just didn't have the courage to say those things to anyone's face. These folks are not going to go away, I'm sorry to say. It would be nice if human nature could evolve a bit. But that doesn't mean anyone has to put up with this sort of shit any more than necessary. I'm also sorry to say that as a man, I'm pretty sure I'll never understand how a woman feels when she goes through something like this, and it makes me angry that so many would have to.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
"A man threatened to rape my mouth with a shit-covered horse-cock this afternoon."
"Oh you're so melodramatic. That's not even remotely true!"
"Um, yes, it is true. Here's the post."
"It's a fact, everything you're saying is not true."
In your response, you're creating what's known as a straw man - "a sham argument meant to be defeated." She never said "all men everywhere are threatening to rape women!" Unfortunately, until you stop reading every article like this as if it's a personal attack, the problem will persist, too.
Well, it's a logical fallacy, called Poisoning the Well. You discredit what a person might say later by misrepresenting them now. You calmly and rationally tell them that it's a logical fallacy, and that's how you defend it.
I remember in the old days of debating on the internet logical fallacies were referenced a lot. I remember Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit getting a lot of hits when arguments got emotional. It doesn't happen so much anymore, because there's a large influx of people making highly emotive arguments but without much discipline in reasoned arguments. They may make valid points, but when they don't you should point out the logical fallacies in their reasoning. We're all prone to logical fallacies, so it's healthy for debate overall.
She has death threats sent to her phone. This isn't just an internet forum issue, and it isn't just her.
I have a daughter, she gets iot, her friends get it, I know 45 year old women who get attacked like this.
You're attitude is a large part of the problem. You have substituted actual think with some sort of ad hom.
It is industry wide, gaming culture wide.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's sexist statements like this that cause a lack of sympathy in the first place:
One of the consequences is that men are extremely sensitive to being criticized by women
This is something that is simply not true of all men so why make statements like that? Do you really expect people to actively defend your cause if you are openly hostile to them just because of they are of the same gender as the people you have a problem with? That's a terrible start to conflict resolution.
You wonder why we have so much dysfunction going on today?
Pervasive culture of butthurt = CHECK
Any perceived insult is by default true = CHECK
Special protected classes that can do no wrong = CHECK
Litigious society causing zero tolerance including honest mistakes = CHECK
Rampant immaturity = CHECK
General abdication of personal responsibility = CHECK
Let's pose a hypothetical, here. Let's say you (Linda, a woman) work for a company A. A has Big Boss, Linda, Tom, Fred and David as employees. The four of you report to Big Boss.
Situation A: Tom says something mean to Fred. Fred tells Tom to go fuck himself. Big Boss hears about it and calls them both into his office. Big Boss tells Tom to square his shit away or he's fired. Big Boss admonishes Fred to come see him about this in the future rather than responding in kind. Tom and Fred go on about their work and are a bit more careful about their interactions. This is a regular thing for Tom as he's brilliant but a loose cannon verbally. Big Boss talks to Tom and admonishes him that if he can't keep his asshole comments to himself, he will end up fired with prejudice.
Situation B: Linda says something mean to Fred. Fred tells Linda she can go fuck herself. Other employees hear the latter half of the exchange. Linda goes to Big Boss and complains about Fred using foul language around her. Big Boss calls them both into the office. Linda tells her story and Big Boss asks her to return to her desk. Big Boss then lectures Fred about the sensitivities of women in the workforce and how the small company cannot afford to defend against a "workplace harassment" lawsuit. Fred complains that Linda started the whole thing. Big Boss says it won't matter because a jury will default rule in favor of the woman because of articles like the above. Fred points out that justice is supposed to be blind. Big Boss points out that in cases of harassment, lay-wisdom holds that when women harass men, the men need to grow a pair, but when men harass women, it is only right and proper to expect better decorum out of the men. Big Boss never says anything to Linda because it could be construed as the abuse of power in a workplace environment.
Now, you may laugh at this but these are actual shit storms I've seen happen. The problem is that while most women aren't self-entitled whiners and most men are not adolescent assholes, we can't catch a break because the lawyers and bean-counters won't let a manager fire the shit out of someone just for being a prick/cunt. As George Takei said, we've reduced ourselves to the lowest common denominator of butthurt.
Is this what we've come to? Pretending online trolls are a problem specifically for women?
Here's a hint for the author of that article: Trolls are adept at identifying that which will get under your skin, and will hit that button repeatedly as long as it keeps spitting out a pellet ( much like this article ). If we're going to generalize it, men don't get this particular brand of trollling because it doesn't work on us. Ultimately, it has very little to do with sexism.
But no; let's work on trying to make ourselves a better brand of troll. Let me know how that works out for you.
( and no; had the author been a man, I'd have responded in the same manner )
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
men say this stuff to other men all the time.
You don't think men call other men bitches, cunts, etc in games? The abuse is pretty common.
The difference here as usual is that women expect to be treated differently. They don't think that's what they want but it is actually what they want.
And I'm okay with treating women better. However, if that's the new rule, then women need to acknowledge it. That's the only price. If women so much as acknowledge that men are treating them with kid gloves it short circuits most of the PC equality arguments.
As it should.
If women don't want that and want to be treated equal... then fine... but that means not complaining when you're treated like a man. Which is going to mean getting cussed out by people that will LAUGH at you when you cry. People that will show you ZERO pity when you break down. People that will if anything hold you in contempt for being so weak.
Are you prepared for that ladies? If so... game on.
If not... completely fine. But then we're playing by the old rules of male/female relations. Which means you're just a girl.
We've seen this PC crap try to gain purchase in the tech community for years. Linus Thorvald recently got told to be nicer women and that he shouldn't cus out people that he thinks are doing a crappy job.
He told her that she wasn't tolerating his culture and his way of doing things... and that he wasn't going to change anything.
I'll hold the same position here for the same reasons. If the girls want to be treated like girls then that's fine. If they want to be treated like men, that's fine. But stop trying to eat your man cake and have your girl perks too. Its either/or.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
anecdotes
Prove very little and when published in a form like this prove even less. Sexual harassment and assault are highly politicized and in many cases overstated. When the mere accusation of sexual harassment in the form of making dongle jokes in a private conversation can end careers it's blatant sexism to claim it's not taken seriously enough. Sexism? yes: spreading fear that men are abusive and dangerous.
Ive personally never heard of a man in the games industry getting rape threats for having an opinion.
Death threats are every bit as common. Being a different gender means the hatred may be sexualized. "No rape threats against men" is a piss poor measure. How about coming up with some actual numbers reflecting the supposedly heightened hostility against women? Because no I won't take your word for it.
Many men believe women have no worth in the games industry beyond appearance.
The video game industry is particularly egregious at only representing women as sex objects. As such, many gamers are trained to only see women in that context.
Would you care to back that up with facts? A survey maybe? Because it sounds like you pulled it straight from whence many of your other claims come. One sexist asshole does not a culture make. There are many games with strongfemale characters. And don't say sexy clothes prove gamers are sexist unless you want to talk about the thousands of hulking, musclebound men in games.
This kind of harassment leaves long-lasting damage. It affects our friendships, and can cause us to be distant from others.
So your overly sensitive friend proves that the same hatred is worse when leveled against women? Equality means standing up for yourself. If you want to be a damsel in distress you don't want equality.
Women in the industry are told by men what is valid for us to feel.
No, women in general are told they're special and need everyone to cater to them. Then the gaming industry didn't cater as much garnering feminist ire. You can feel whatever you want but so can I.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Just how annoying is this person that she generates that kind of hate ?
I have worked with/under/and above women and the only time I have ever seen anyone get this kind of reaction, male or female is when it is provoked or the people perpetrating it were a few punch cards short of a program.
Says the person who's never been publicly visible. No matter who you are, what your personality is, etc there will always be some people out there that don't like you, won't hire you, or otherwise throw negativity your way even if you've done absolutely nothing to earn their hate.
Your reaction is what I've noticed most women get if they even gently bring something up. It's 100% complete denial and blame the messenger.
What I can't figure out is why? I'm a guy, I'm a software developer. I like to work off data. Every single even halfway notable woman I've seen or talked to from conferences in person to online forums and Twitter all tell the same story: massive ongoing campaigns of harassment. The quantity only varies with the topic under discussion. Even the women developers I've worked with who aren't famous have multiple stories of being threatened with rape, patted on the head and dismissed in a meeting with colleagues, having their boobs grabbed at conferences, etc.
True, this behavior may be a small group of bad apples, but by denying the problem exists at all you're enabling those bad apples to continue doing what they do. You don't need to do much to be part of the solution, just admit you're not a woman and don't actually know what women experience when other men aren't watching and that there's so much smoke from almost every single woman in tech it is highly probable there is fire.
Seriously, why can't we just admit women catch a lot of shit just for being women in tech? No one is claiming they shouldn't catch shit for having stupid ideas or writing bad code. No one is claiming you can't ask women out or you have to be some kind of PC choir boy for fear of offending someone. What is this irrational urge to deny, deny, deny?
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
For all of you trying to turn this into a men's rights issue, just stop.
You're embarrassing my gender.
Yes there are some unfair things that happen to men. Yes there are some real issues.
But we aren't talking about those issues right here in this post. We're talking about women right now, so let's stick to the topic.
Even as a man I find it highly annoying that the Internet jackass squad has to jump into the middle of every single conversation about women and cry "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ?!?!". Just fucking stop it already. Write your own blog post about men's issues and submit it to slashdot and we can discuss it over there.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I want to do a point-by-point, but ... there is no point. This is just a hate speech, perhaps only good for it's cathartic effect.
The bit where she indicates that harassment involving looks or those taunts of a sexual nature are unique to women because she hadn't heard of men being harassed was an impressive piece of ignorance, but itself only a single point adrift in a sea of wrong, and it'd take too long to wade through every one.
That being said, I took special issue with the sub-section that starts out "People just don't understand," and is then followed by paragraph after paragraph of "men can't understand," or "men don't know this." The very design of this argument refutes rational discussion; make claim, then state men (and 'brainwashed' women) can't understand, if anyone disagrees - that is, does not completely accept male culpability regardless of their involvement - they are perpetuating the problem due to ignorance, if not malice, and their arguments are thus refuted. In this way one can neatly make a claim and deal with dissenters in a single fell stroke.
I also noted that there wasn't a single constructive comment on how to fix this perceived problem. There were even references to pieces that had made suggestions, but this one in itself was simply a sort of angry screed against men.
In summary; the article failed to present a real case that misogyny is the driving force behind harassment of specific individuals or that indeed, harassment of a given gender is either exclusive, endemic or systemic. If this was meant to spur a call to action, it was a poorly thought out exercise.
- and I'm not saying that because she's female, either.
This is why women are socialized to carefully dance around these issues, disagreeing with men in an extremely gentle manner. Not because women are nicer creatures than men. But because our very survival can depend on it. ... 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."
These days, it's men who are being 'carefully socialized' to dance around feminist gynocentric expectations and value systems. I believe HR departments call it 'sensitivity training.' Since proof of guilt is rarely required, employment for men is now a mad dash in a mine field of passive aggressive barbs just waiting to trigger whenever a woman is pissed enough to throw the book at a man. we're told this is justified because men alone engage in this behavior en masse, and that women are (ironically) damsels in distress who have no say or part in their situations, nor are they capable of similar behavior. This crap flooded hollywood and tv in the 90s, and now we're getting the full deluge of the same propaganda in the gaming scene. What bullshit. Polygon loves it, though, as they post a lot of it. The fact they shut off comments for this article speaks volumes about its logical and probably factual integrity.
We don't give people respect who haven't earned it and/or have given us reason to take it from them. Derek smart anyone? People still give john romero shit for daikatana even though he was a big part of the success of doom. He's revered for the good he's done and demonized for his stillborn shitpiles. This is how it's supposed to work. We're not supposed to hold some people above reproach based on their sexual organs or their race or any other irrelevant attribute, as that is the very definition of privilege. This makes the whole article 180 degrees out from the truth. Growing a thicker skin IS the answer as it allows one to stop and look at criticism objectively instead of immediately flying into a tantrum and/or a flurry of passive aggressive countermaneuvers. It allows one to ignore the ad hominems and other fallacies from any communication, whether it's well written constructive criticism or vitriolic trolling, and extract any truth from it.
These days, we are seeing more and more extreme reactions for ever more mundane situations from a culture bred to be as intolerant of criticism as possible. Everything has to be positive. All the time. No 'negative nancies' or 'debbie downers' allowed. The fact this precludes talking about the truth of things more than 50% of the time is lost on these social engineers. All that matters to them are feelings and consensus; the facts and truth be damned.
The term 'safer' here is used in place of 'more amenable' to make the situation sound more dire than it is. The bottom line is, very very very few men are truly guilty of assaulting women. I believe the stats on college campuses nationwide is 53 in one year...53 out of millions of students on thousands of campuses. This is NOT an epidemic, and I'll bet it's more than the number of assaults by male game developers and staff. If you are assaulted, don't whine on the internet. Call the police. The reason most of these women don't is because they know their claims are bullshit. Otherwise, they should act like the adults they want to be treated as, taking warranted criticism for what it is, regardless of format, and discarding the rest.
My daughter and I were talking about how much personally directed sexual violence geek girls must endure. She was talking about the obsessive personally detailed threats Anita Sarkeesian creator of Feminist Frequency endures from the male geek community on a continual basis. Some of these are threats include her personal details needed to carry them out. This is really scary stuff.
We were talking about this and she casually let drop:
"I received my first rape threat in a forum when I was eleven"
She casually went on:
"Eleven is the age when geek girls first start discovering the Internet and make their first posts. They comment on a game about some small feature they don't like. Some guy will flame them with a rape threat"
This is very shocking for a dad to hear his daughter say. "My eleven year old little girl!" She is twice as old now. But her saying it so casually is deeply disturbing.
My daughter has assimilated it. She has grown a "thick skin". I think she enjoys giving back as good as she gets. But not the violent rape stuff.
It is very sad that the male geek culture permits such abuse to go on.
We MEN need to start talking about this. We MEN need to ostracize the men who threaten rape.
* It is never funny.
* It is not "just a joke".
* It is not harmless.
It is really scary for geek girls because there is always a risk that it might be real. There are unbalanced men out there after all.
How do I change this? I start by writing about it. I talk with other people. I try to get MEN to understand the problem and see how scary it is for women.