Article and documentary from BBC on sexual harassment in the world of video gaming.

Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18280000

World service documentary:

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What do you think about the quote that "sexual harassment is part of the culture"?

When I saw mention of the Cross Assault incident I instantly lost all interest in this.
While gender-based harrassment is inexcuseable, this shit is blown way out of proportion.

Fuck the media, all I've got to say.

So mentioning 1 incident invalidates the whole issue?

I was reading this yesterday and i don't think sexual harrasment is part of the culture, insults in general to every gamer is.

This is the internet. Everyone gets verbal abuse at some point and it is part and parcel of online gaming (regretably) you either let it affect you or you don't. I'd argue that girls on the whole don't get any more abuse than your average gamer, It's no doubt more sexual than your average insult though.

Perhaps the best answer for anyone who don't want to get abuse is to not speak at all online.

I'm with freddie on this one, the online gaming community is abusive and they will find some detail to pick you on and use that against you whether that be gender, accent , ethnicity or whatever. Maybe it is easier for the community to identify gender than some of the other groups, gamers will do whatever they can to demotivate the enemy and/or make up for poor play on their own side. most of it seems to be jealousy maybe because they are having a bad game and feel the need to highlight someone else so they arent brought into question. This is however not true for a majority of gamers the minority is giving us a bad image

No, bringing up one incident that should have been let go months ago but was continuously media-whored over takes away from the point of discussion.

It was a painful (and shameful for the gaming community as a whole) experience for the girl in question, so much so that she forfeited her shot at the prize-money, and it's been taken out of context and blown out of proportion ever since. All parties actually involved have long ago decided to try and forget about it.

People are more abusive on the internet than in real life, that's a well-known truth (debatable, nonetheless). It's not pretty, it's not okay, but regurgitating old issues makes the gaming community seem much worse to the public than it really is (mostly). This sort of coverage helps no one. Jackasses will continue to be jackasses, and outsiders will continue to think that gamers are immature, homophobic, sexist, racist assholes.

I think it was an article on Kotaku (/spits) that mentioned the crowd at a fighting game tournament shouting "Kill that bitch!". The writer found the comments to be violently aggressive, inappropriate and sexist. If someone gets offended over something like that, when clearly it is an offhand comment directed at a video-game character/person of public interest in a tightly-knit scene of gamers, they must have lived a good life so far, because they apparently don't have any truly substantial issues to worry about.

This is where I lose interest. There are incidents where someone is actually being sexually harrassed (like the Cross Assault thing), and the offenders must be penalized and shunned, but by the community they are a part of, not media-whores picking apart every little thing to the point of ridiculousness.

So those people that wish to play online have to mute themselves to avoid abuse? It doesn't work. You can remain silient and still get slandered for X, Y, Z.

"This is the Internert" - This statement pretty much sums up what's wrong with the whole thing. This cover-all phrase seems to excuse a multitude of sins and gives the impression that the abuse, the trolling, the slurs, the griefing, *everything* is accepted.



Don't get me wrong, there's parts I agree with in both what Freddie and Mehby have said. The crux of the problem is that being female (I'm not btw, but I see how bullheaded my misses can get when she's online and someone decides to target her) is that it's an open target, regardless of the race, age, or ethnic background of the person slinging the insults. For people that like to wave their e-peen around, getting stomped by the fairer sex is a *massive* dent to their ego, so the sexual slurs come out.

The frustrating thing is, there can never be an "Internet Police" that can clamp down on the revolting minority that seem to tar those of us (and I can happily include the H|H as the majority) that play on the internet in a way that is sociable and enjoyable. I remember, and was part of, the Online Warfare Pact (the [OwP]) back during Day of Defeat's early years, but the fact they couldn't screen their members meant it fell under the weight of people reporting abuse/griefing/etc from people wearing the tag.

To sum up though, I agree with freddie that yes, sexual harrasment is not part of the culture and that there's an overarching vileness that some people weild with frequency at those playing online with them. Years of people getting away with whatever they like and the younger generation being brought online with the mainstream games (I'm looking at you Call of Duty...) has soured the communities of many a game. And I sadly don't see a light at the end of the tunnel just yet. It's going to take a one hell of a push from within those communities for each and every online game, group, etc to kick out/ward off/ban/deal with the people that take it upon themselves to ruin everyone else day before we'll even begin to blunt the issue.

And as Fluffy says, it *has* to be the communities in question, and not a media review that disects the "best bits" for an article that would have to do this.

Disclaimer: No offence is meant by any of the above. Just my rarely spoken 2pence!

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.

That image reminds me of one of Derren Brown's shows in the Experiments series called 'The Gameshow'.

He shows that given anonymity and a crowd, the 'mob' would happily vote for more and more cruel things to happen to a stranger.

I don't think the gaming community has a problem with Sexual Harassment, the homophobia is worse - and that is what I notice whilst being straight.

I think the gaming community (some sections in particular) has an abuse problem in general, which is bound to arise when there is anonymous competition and no consequences from individuals actions.

The problem shouldn't really be too hard to solve - allow certain people the ability to record the abuse and ban the people responsible, as soon as word gets out this happens it'll start disappearing.

edit - my solution here is the same as sarge posted, it was posted as I was writing.

Gamer culture in general is rather off putting for a multitude of reasons. Half the time, any multiplayer experience I get involved with and lose interest in isn't because of the game itself, but the people playing it.

It's not me chickening out and running away, I can take the shit (so much as I'd wish it wasn't necessary), but it just becomes so corrosive and soul destroying that I can't enjoy the game any more. Worst of all, spending any longer surrounded in that atmosphere and I begin to become just as much of an arsehole as the very people I'm railing against. I'm fighting fire with fire and burning myself.

The most recent experience of this for me was BF3. I enjoyed it for a time, but the attitudes just piled up and spoiled it. You know of the recent highlighting of racism in Eastern Europe for the football? Play BF3 and you wouldn't be surprised at all. I've never seen such a tide of hate coming from one group of people.
I ended up telling someone to "go fuck his dog so he felt better about his inadequacies as a human being".

I don't know why I said that. It's not something to be proud of. But I really wanted to hurt that person. At that point I realised it was time to stop.

As far as sexism goes, women have enough bullshit to contend with in the real world, lest they suffer even more on the internet. Whatever social or sexual reason there is for excessive male machismo in gaming, it's unflattering, makes everyone look like the stereotypical horny little nerd, and is poor company to keep in anyone's book.