Discrimination that gamers experience

Look up Gamergate.

It's to the point where people even wanting to discuss sexism in gaming receive death threats. Even the idea of having a forum to discuss how to reduce intimidating behavior at SXSW brought out threats resulting in the forums being cancelled.

Any time a person is treated in a different way than they would normally just because of their sex, I feel my blood boil inside my veins.

This is greatly exaggerated and is mostly hyped up (and highly effective). political spin.

Gamergate was never a fair fight. One side has a popular narrative with access to exception PR, national media on their side and the backing of national politicians. The other side were a few rather foolish kids who kept saying stupid thing. I am going to guess that you haven't even heard the other side of the story.

The whole story is now being manipulated to fit a political narrative. The real issues of free expression versus the rights to not be offended aren't being addressed.

Is this really true? Does your blood boil in the cases where being a man is a disadvantage (or only when it is women).

If you are truly for equality in all cases (when men are helped as well as when women are helped) then you have my respect. In today's flavor of feminism this is rather rare.

For example, a man will receive a significantly higher prison sentence than a woman for the exact same crime. Does this make your blood boil?

Both gender should be treat equality.

This is a really broad question. I think you need to make the question more specific to make it worthwhile. Sexism is defined in different ways by different people (and different times).

Let's look at what I think is the interesting question. Video games are a form of popular art. They are created by people within a specific culture at a specific time and thus reflect that values and dreams and fears that relate to a certain point of time. In this way video games are no different than earlier art forms from popular music, to written stories and fold tales, to plays.

The ways that popular art deals with gender always reflects, in some sense, the ideas that are part of a culture at a specific point in time. In my opinion, this is a good thing. It is an artistic expression and it should be seen as such.

In the 21st century we now have this frantic search for "sexism" (which of course is a reflection of our culture at this specific point of time). Some of this is valid and interesting. Some of it is ridiculous (there is a musicologist named Susan McClary who claims that Beethoven's 9th symphony is sexist because the "throbbing" of the cellos represents rape).

As a father with a preteen daughter, I want this discussion to take place. I want us as a society to look at gender roles and to see where my daughter can be given the equal opportunity to live a full life. However, I want the discussion to be a real discussion where all of the sides are heard. It is very difficult to have this discussion (and in many cases, I feel it is the "feminist" side that is shutting down this discussion).

The interesting question with video games is the tension that exists. On one side is the need for free artistic expression in a popular art-form that reflects the feelings and fantasies of an audience that is traditionally young and male. On the other side are people who feel that any popular art should reflect the new sensibilities about gender and equality. In the middle is the problem of even defining what reasonable ideas about "gender and equality" are and who controls this definition.

One solution is for people to expose games that they feel are sexist and try to exert political and economic pressure to limit the production and marketing of these games.

This is happening, and it causes an understandable backlash since it allows a minority to put undue pressure based on their opinion of what should be permissible in games.

Whether this is a good idea is up for debate. One consequence of this trend is that it gives a large amount of power to censor content to a relatively small number of people... and these people get to set the rules over what is acceptable or not.

Unfortunately you don't hear this discussion.

The dialog has been stifled (and the misogynists can't be blamed for that).

It depends on who you game with. My ex and I used to belong to a Halo clan named the B46. There were a total of maybe 6-10 of us who would play Halo on a nightly basis, this went on for about 3 years. Out of that group we had my ex and another guys wife who were part of our clan. They were the best shooters in our group and we had a really good group. We had some other clans who would join for games and some of them had female members and some of them didn't.

Oddly enough, we only had an issue with young gamers. Most of the people our ages 32-45, had no issues with gamer girls and encouraged others to join in. Most of the issues I have experienced in gaming came from younger players, say ages 12-17. I can't tell you how many times I have had some punk ass teen tell me he has fucked my mother... In fact a lot of the flack and immaturity I saw from those guys reminds me of the same stupid **** that goes on here.

Are you saying the forums at SXSW were not cancelled because of threats or that women discussing harassment in video games are not attacked online or doxed? It seems like the real issue is a woman's right to say "I don't like that behavior" without starting to receive threats to her safety and are made real when the person calls up your home address. It's one thing to be an ass. That is free speech (although unless the game server is run by the government, you are governed by the TOS anyway). It is another thing to issue threats.

The reasonable people who are questioning the popular narrative about gender roles in video games have been completely squelched (through no fault of their own).

Do you accept that reasonable people can question the narrative?

Of course I support a woman's right to say "I don't like that behavior" and I absolutely condemn harassment and doxing. The immature jerks who made death threats and other harassing comments were behaving very badly (and ironically helping the people the people they were attacking). But this is irrelevant.

The question is how do we have a reasonable dialog about the issue of gender in video games (or popular art in general). Is there anyone who is willing to have an intelligent fact-based dialog on who gets to define sexism and what pressure they should be able to exert in a popular art form?

I agree with everything you say in your last post (other than I have no real idea about what happened in SXSW). I think it misses the point.

The problem with discussions about sexism is that too often the narrative takes precedence over the facts. This is why when you say "sexism and gamers", we end up with a discussion about "gamergate" (a single scandal where some people acted very badly).

There is so much else to talk about that is much more important, and nuanced. There are gender stereotypes, and cultural ideas. There is the tension between ideological needs and free expression. There is question about how ideas about morality should be reflected in video games (or any other art form) and how much the medium should reflect fantasy or cultural norms.

Engineer, specifically to you...

You seem to be eager to talk about gamergate... and I will agree that it fits the narrative very well. I am happy to talk about Gamergate, but I doubt it will be that interesting. I will probably agree with you about most things, except I think you have David and Goliath mixed up. The women in this story have been supported by media and politicians and are far more more powerful than the men involved who have been crushed and pilloried (not that there is anything wrong with that). But the incident has been used to squelch, rather than encourage dialog on the underlying issues.

Are you willing to talk about the important issues where the answers aren't so clear and one-sided? There are two sides to the issue of gender roles in gaming and the facts don't always fit the narrative.

So that was the entire purpose of the SXSW forums: to discuss the issue and how to design games to keep the good while addressing the abuse issues. Gamergate was not even part of it, but still it got shutdown.

I don't know what happened with the SXSW forums. But let me make a couple of points.

1) I have been on the unpopular side of contentious issues... immigration for one. I have never seen anyone cowed in the way, especially when they are winning in the court of public opinion. Immigration advocates get death threats, yet they go on. It is an unfortunate part of being in public debate in modern US, but it doesn't stop discussion really.

2) Cancelling this forum didn't stop them from getting their message out. It mostly likely helped them make their point (which is why you are bringing it up). Whether or not this was a conscious calculation or not in their decision to shut down the forum (neither you or I know), it was certainly a very good move for them politically.

(Note that I am not saying that there weren't death threats, I am sure there were. I am saying that they did not need to shut down the forum any more than any other group does.)

3) I have been to these "forums" on issues I agree with. They suit their purpose well, they are designed to promote a specific point of view. They are not designed to discuss both sides of an issue.

I am a little bit disappointed, Engineer.

I asked you if you would be willing to have a reasonable, fact based discussion that considered both sides of the issue. This implies that we will look at all of the facts on all the interesting issue involved with gender in video games, rather then focusing on the misdeeds of a group of people we both condemn.

There is a simple popular narrative. The problem with these narratives is that the important issues rarely fit into them when you consider the facts. The simple narrative allows you to discount any questions that don't fit this without having to consider different perspectives.

I wish you and I could get past this simple narrative into the interesting issues about the role of gender in video games and popular art in general.

So far, I seem to be the only person even making an attempt.

Max has an hysterical, obsessive fear and hatred of women. He has trashed two threads i started about women, by making claims to "prove" that i was wrong, when i had not in fact said what that implied. It does not matter what arguments anyone here advances, nor what evidence anyone produces, Max won't believe it, and he will attempt to shout everyone down by flooding the thread with his posts.

Thank you Setanta for the great example of how personal attacks can be used in service of political rectitude.

If you just tell people about my alleged "hysterical obsessive fear and hatred of women" you are discounting every point I make without having to even consider any other perspective that contradicts your simplistic ideological narrative. You don't need to answer any questions, come up with any facts or make any observations. That one personal attack shuts down the discussion.

I suppose in that way your point is at least indirectly relevant to the gamergate controversy.

I would like to hear your opinion on the topic of this thread (sexism that gamers experience). I get that you probably didn't come here to discuss the topic, but...

since you are here now, why not discuss it anyway?

I certainly didn't come here to help you trash the thread.

That's might nice you you Setanta. A quick illustrative personal attack here, and then you're off to yell at people who piss you off in other threads for your fawning fans.

I will see you around.

I do wish that someone here would be interested in having a respectful discussion with someone who didn't share their exact viewpoint (where "respectful discussion" would mean a discussion that didn't devolve into insults and personal attacks). You can't say I didn't try.

Yeah, your love of respectful discussion which doesn't devolve into insults and personal attacks, that's what motivates you to go into threads and make snarky comments about me. As you said in one recent example, i love irony.