I find it very strange that this behaviour is simply being accepted as "part of the game".

The issue has never been about being annoyed by the occasional taunt from people on the server, nor is it because these people kill me over and over again and I'm just irrationally annoyed that people are better at me at games on the internet.

I would ask, why be tolerant of a behaviour that is annoying?

Off topic: I've noticed that the clan has been very tolerant of a certain player that has appended the word #rape to their name. I wonder what SgtHardplace would make of it.

I feel like Klu is the forum equivalent of the drunk stranger on the street who walks up to you and your friends and tries to tell you all what we're doing wrong in life.

Once again, thanks for your input.

See me get on my high horse. Look, here I go...

You're all welcome to take this however you like. If you want to be insulted, go ahead, but this is my opinion and last time I checked there aren't any rules against expressing it, and people get away with slagging each other off on here all the damn time.

There have been a few comments made that sexual harassment doesn't really exist in the online gaming community.

That's bullshit. It's pervasive, and often invisible, but it exists. It exists on the HH just as it exists anywhere else.

An example I'm dredging up from memory: Rusty, Beth, Starbuck - all girls (I believe) - all talked about by members and ex-members of the community in a manner which objectified and reduced them to purely sexual beings. I reckon there are posts in the archives that'll back this up, but I've watched/heard it happen on Mumble and on TF2.

Sometimes something 'very bad' happens like that fighting tourney, and it gets press media, but for every incident like that which gets coverage, there are hundreds that don't.

>90% of the members and regs of the HH are male. In general men don't see sexual harassment because we're socialised into a male-dominated world - the patriarchy as the feminists call it. And that is sadly true.

Another example, which whilst not direct sexual harassment simply perpetuates the macho bullshit male gamer stereotype and the culture of oppression (because that's what it is, despite the defensive knee-jerk reactions I'm going to get from the people who feel offended at this) is Rape.

Rape is a word with a number of connotations and a number of dictionary definitions. A unit of land measurement, a type of seed crop, oh yeah, and non-consensual coercive sexual activity, often violent.

It also gets thrown around completely casually by many members of this community. Why?

Because it's all about dominating, humiliating, owning, having power over and otherwise completely defeating an opponent.

Doesn't sound like anything to do with land measurements to me.. nor seed crops. Sexual violence anyone?

'But we don't mean it like that'. Bullshit. It's used exactly in that context. Sure it might not mean you literally took your cock out and stuck it in an unresisting or coerced foe, but it's *definitely* used in the context of having power over another. It's used to degrade, it's used to big yourselves up, it's used to show off how great, how powerful, how much of a winner you are.

Statistics estimate that 1 in 4 women have been the victim of some kind of sexual violence. I don't know what the figure is for men but it's much much lower.

To talk about 'totally raping that guy' is to degrade them utterly, no matter what your intent, and it's pathetic.

I hear it on mumble a lot, and I try to call people on it when it happens. And guess what happens... That's right folks! I get a whole heap of defensive self-justifying knee jerk reactions from the people doing it because they don't get how pervasive, how invisible and how fucking priveliged they are not to have to worry about the threat of sexual violence. If they did they'd not be tossing the language around so casually. I bring it up and *I'm* the bad guy. Fuck that shit. I happen to know full well that others agree with me, but no-one else wants to say anything because they don't want to have to deal with the same kind of bullshit reaction that I get.

And people wonder why I don't hang around much any more.

The best answer to not receive abuse online is for there to be clear rules that abuse will not be tolerated. And for there to be active moderation to handle that abuse, and for communities to actively police themselves - as Fluffy says. Sadly though, I don't see the HH doing very much of this where it's needed - although thankfully it's not common on the forums.

So yeah, there's my soap box.

Then, precedes to add to the thread, that is pretty much resolved, by writing a wall of text that repeats (with a dash of vitriol) what has already been said over the last 9 pages, and stirs up the ashes.