Harassment in gaming

[Elf Witch]

I'm not going to go into this in great depth because it is a tangent in an already controversial subject, and it distracts from the main topic - which is sexism in gaming - and will move the conversation out of gaming into a broader political sphere we don't need to touch.

But I think I can briefly sum up why this situation isn't as straight forward as you think it is. Ask danny's opinion of who he thinks would be believed if the accuser is white.

And ask a black woman what she thinks would happen if she accused a white guy of this without proof or witnesses? None of this is straight forward especially when it deals with harassment and groping.

Let me ask you something do you have much experience with women or men for that matter who have been sexually assaulted? I ask because I was assaulted at 16 and since I didn't immediately tell anyone when I finally broke down and told my father and we went to the police it became a he said she said and there was no evidence to back up my claim of what happened. The police refused to charged him so he got away with it until he was caught in the act several years later and went to prison for 5 years.

I have spent over 40 years in various support groups and I can tell you that many victims have had the same exact experience I had with the police. And if the guy is white with a middle class or higher economic status is well educated and charming good luck unless he got violent or someone witnessed it. It is a little easier if you are white and your attacker is not or is poor an lacking say social graces. I have heard versions of this story so many times. From the girl who was assaulted by her pastor but is afraid to speak up because he is well respected in the community with a wife and daughters of his own. I don't often bring this up in these discussions because I have been accused of using it to emotionally blackmail to win my argument.

I am bringing it up now to point out that it is not that easy for a victim to get help from the police and yes who the victim is and who the harasser is colors how the police view it. A scantily clad cosplayer who has posed for pictures all day and has enjoyed that attention is going to have a harder time being believed that she was harassed by a lot of people.

A woman who has been drinking even if not falling down drunk also faces this.

The same with a woman who was flirting with a guy earlier and then he does not take no or takes liberties he thinks he is entitled to because you flirted or he bought you dinner or a drink. Date rape is one of the hardest to prosecute.

I mentioned in my first post about being groped in an elevator at Worldcon by a famous writer.I will never tell on the internet who is was. I learned the hard way back in the 70s that some people who are fans of his get really angry over it. I don't need to be called a liar or interrogated if maybe I was flirting with him and sent him mixed signals and I certainly don't want to hear excuses how he was drunk and how he is now sober as that some how excuses what he did. And it was not just me who had to deal with him in those early years before he sought treatment for his issues.

I believe what this blogger wrote about how the police were of no help because I experienced it for myself and have heard so many victims say the same thing.

And no I am not saying that an innocent man accused of rape or assault can't have his life dragged threw the mud and his life destroyed by a false claim. But the burden of proof especially in court comes down to evidence and if there is enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. And Yes I know a lot can depend on who the jury believes and who has the best attorney.

 

[Libramarian]

Hey @Celebrim, I believe this is exactly what @Elf Witch was talking about when she talked about burden of proof. Here's your example right here.

If you're going to jump into someone else's conversation, make sure you're following along.

I haven't personally badgered the author to prove anything, first of all. I haven't said anything to her. I said upthread that if she has anything to prove, it's her claim that the threats she received were from Wyrd staff. That's a serious accusation that could affect the reputation of their business.

(Imagine if you owned Wyrd Miniatures, for a moment. The situation is a bit messier than you thought at first, isn't it?)
[MENTION=67925]Fildrigar[/MENTION] then replied to this part of my post, ostensibly to provide this proof. I looked through the thread they linked but didn't see it so I asked them to point it out for me.

 

[Elf Witch]

No victim should have to put aside their rights or feeling over someone else being a bigger victim. Should she put aside her feelings and rights over someone else being raped? Should that raped woman put aside her rights and feeling over another woman being murdered? Should the family of the murdered woman put aside her rights and feelings because bombings happen?

That there was a Slippery Slope for those who don't know, but it illustrates the point very well. No victim should have to be silent and put aside rights and feelings because of a more prominent victim. They have the right to say, "Hey, I don't do that so leave me out of that attack. Now, let's see what we can do about your issue."

When POC talk about their experiences even if they do so with hostility directed at white people my first reaction is not to jump and say hey I don't do that and feel offended and feel the need to talk about my feelings there by taking the attention off their issues. I know that all white people are not racist I know many POC who know this too. I also know that some because of their experiences do believe that. I also know that getting defensive and turning the talk to how I feel about the accusation is not going to reach them or change their mind.

Is there a time and place to talk about how you feel yes but it is not when they are talking about how they have been effected by sexism or racism. Even if you are not trying to deflect you are changing the subject and making it about you.

You brought up the whole child custody thing men face in family court and yes it needs to be discussed but not when say a women is talking about dealing with the courts to get her EX to pay for child support. It is the same with rape. Yes men get raped what happens in our prisons is a terrible thing and needs discussion but you don't bring it up when talking about sexual assault on college campuses. And it works the same way in the opposite to.

I have said that I wish people would not make such provocative statements on issues because it fuels this kind of issues and the messages often gets lost. I have many arguments with people in the social justice community over this and how these kind of statements makes people close their ears. But I also know that sometimes you can talk calmly and rationally trying to get your statement noticed but it is ignored until you start screaming.

Black lives matter campaign is not something that happened over night it has been building for years and finally enough was enough and people openly protested. The civil rights movement would never have accomplished anything if people had not provoked change from Rosa Parks refusing to move to black students openly walking into a white only tables in restaurants and demanding to be served and refusing to leave until they were dragged out. I remember listening to my very southern parents talking and complaining about how uncivilized it was and why didn't they just talk to the restaurant owners and the mayors and governors instead of stirring up trouble.

There are hundreds of posts and blogs on the internet about harassment in geek hobbies most get ignored by the majority of geeks. But this one with the white male terrorist title has gotten people talking. I have seen this posted in several gaming forums, it has been on twitter and Facebook so I think we are seeing that sometimes you have to be loud to get people to listen.

 

[Celebrim]

Ok, one thing I do know is that if this thread ends up being about a bunch of issues of the larger world rather than specifically about harassment in gaming, we might as well shut it down now. The further afield we roam, the more things we are going to find to disagree about, and the more often our different personal life experiences are going to cause us to talk past each other. There is no use trying to come to any agreement on all these larger issues in this forum.

Let's try to get our focus back down on specific issues at the table, in a gaming store, or at a convention.

One thing that has repeatedly happened in this thread is that both sides have said to the other one, in effect, "You are reading into these comments things I'm not saying, or not intending to say." That seems to me very applicable to a gaming table. And in particular, I'd much rather hear opinions and perspectives on pregnancy, rape, sexuality, gender dynamics and so forth in the game world from people who've lived very different lives than I have, and how that can be handled or mishandled than to listen to arguments about gender politics that I could get at any political forum on the web.

 

[Obryn]

Wow. Lotta guys in here super concerned about teaching women the finer points of persuasion.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Let's try to get our focus back down on specific issues at the table, in a gaming store, or at a convention.

Indeed. And I think the primary things that needs to happen (in a game store or out of it) before all of us as a society can really move on is that the group that has had (and truthfully still predominantly has) the power in this country-- Straight, CIS, Caucasian, Adult, Males-- accepts the fact that the way they have been able to behave in the last several centuries towards other people, is no longer being accepted as "just the ways things are". And when someone outside of the 'Straight, CIS, Caucasian, Adult, Male' group says "Hey, this thing is happening to me/us and it has to stop"... we need to stop, listen, accept that 99.9% of the time what that person is saying is absolutely true, and figure out what we can do to help rather than immediately put our backs up because we got our nose out of joint.

Listen. And believe. Just by starting there, we might very well be on the right path to maybe seeing things get better. Because as amazing as it might be to realize... 99.9% of all people outside of the 'Straight, CIS, Caucasian, Adult, Male' group are not purposely trying to get us in trouble for no reason by making crap up. That's really not happening. Because in fact... they don't NEED to make crap up about us... we do a damn fine job of giving them all the honest reasons in the world.

 

[Celebrim]

*face palm*

 

[Umbran]

No victim should have to put aside their rights or feeling over someone else being a bigger victim.

Nobody should get non-consensually groped in a gaming store either. Clearly, what *should* happen isn't what's happening. What "should" happen clearly didn't work for the author, why do you it expect to work for you?

In a perfect world, one of infinite time, attention, resources, and goodwill, nobody would have to. In *this* world, we must prioritize. Walk into an emergency room on a busy Saturday night with a skinned knee among the gunshot wounds and drug overdoses, and you'll see what I mean. It isn't that your issue isn't an issue, but you may have to wait for it to be addressed. It isn't that they are "bigger victims" - that sounds like an emotionally loaded phrase. It is simply that the injury they suffer is greater than yours.

And, in this case, unlike in the emergency room, properly addressing the larger root issue *will also address your issue*. Work to reduce the sexism in gaming, and you'll reduce the incidence of such articles. Help others, and you help yourself!

So, I will repeat - by all means continue focusing on the harm done to you, if you feel it is the real priority here.

 

[Gradine]

A lot of the "talking past each other" issue comes down a matter of belief. Either you believe the stories women share about their varied experiences with harassment, threatened and/or real violence, and sexual assault, in which you sort of have to acknowledge that there is a problem and something ought to be done about it; or you don't believe them, in which you are completely dismissing their lived experiences and therefore should not be surprised that your protestations of "I don't agree..." or "I don't believe..." are met with the likes of "You don't seem to understand..." You are saying you don't believe in something that is actual fact, something that actually has happened and still happens.

Now, if you do believe that there is a problem then obviously there should be some discussion has to the nature and scope of the problem as well as what, if anything, there can or should be done about it. These are productive conversations. Unfortunately, if you refuse to believe in the problem, insist that the endless multitudes of stories of harassment and violence are all works of fiction, there is sadly nothing you can really add to that discussion and in fact all that you will be capable of doing is disrupting it.

We'd love to invite you to the real world where flagrant misogynists and predators actually exist in numbers far greater than most people seem to be willing to accept, and where the vast multitudes of "#notallmen" gamers enable these predators by either ignoring them, refusing to acknowledge their existence outside a few rare "bad seeds" that only exist in barely relevant "not my community"-land, or refuse to call them out on the less overtly dangerous behaviors and attitudes they exhibit that makes them feel like the overt violence they do commit is actual socially justifiable, or shout down the voices of those who do call predators out on these as "overly sensitive" or "feminazis" or "SJWs" or whatever the hip new derogatory buzzword is for people demanding to be treated with actual respect. We'd love everyone to join the real world and work towards changing it for the better, but a failure to believe in the real world is a barrier to entry to being a productive part of the conversation.

The enduring problem, then, that comes with having this conversation is getting people to the point where they're actually willing to believe the multitudes of stories that exist and are occurring in plain view on internet and at conventions and game stores every god damned day. It's certainly not for lack of evidence, no matter how many people continue to insist on seeing it and dismiss it when it inevitably does get presented. In my mind it's a matter of empathy. Either, at some point in your life, you were raised or trained or learned on your own to have empathy for people whose lived experiences are vastly different from your own, or you weren't. I wouldn't know the first place where to begin in how to train empathy to total strangers over the internet, particularly ones who are inclined to be opposed, either civilly (as has been the case here) or uncivilly (see: most of the rest of the internet gaming forums) to the process in the first place. But I feel it's a process worth figuring out. Until it is I don't see how conversations between people who believe women's stories and those who don't will ever progress beyond talking past each other.



To introduce a new topic, one I'm pretty curious about, but what does it say about how far the tabletop gaming community is along in the process of reversing decades of misogyny and homophobia that it doesn't have its own equivalent to "Gamergate" or "Rabid Puppies"? Is it a good sign? A bad sign? Does it say anything at all? I mean, I know there were assorted grumblings when the 5e PHB dropped its language of inclusivity towards gender identity and sexuality, but Gamergate started over far less and both those movements speak to anxieties about the types of changes to their respective industries that the 5e PHB clearly exemplifies. I mean, I know there's the Chainmail Bikini Enthusiasts Squad, a debate I had actually believed both sides had simply gotten tired of having until it cropped up again in this thread. And I know there's a certain sub-cultures in the darker recesses of the OSR movement that clearly wants to, to put it as indelicately as possible, "Make D&D Rapey Again." But no broad sweeping movement seems to have formed in opposition to the 5e PHB language. In fact, it seemed to get pretty much universal praise, again except for those assorted grumblings here and there. I'd like to think it's a good sign, but it could very easily be a bad one too; that is, the forces that would form such a movement don't feel, like Gamergaters or Rabid Puppies do, that they're losing their grip on their hobby at all, and therefore don't feel the need to establish a counter-culture around "restoring" it. Or does it really just not say anything at all, and that like-minded tabletop gamers have simply latched on to Gamergate?

 

[Celebrim]

A lot of the "talking past each other" issue comes down a matter of belief. Either you believe the stories women share about their varied experiences with harassment, threatened and/or real violence, and sexual assault, in which you sort of have to acknowledge that there is a problem and something ought to be done about it; or you don't believe them, in which you are completely dismissing their lived experiences and therefore should not be surprised that your protestations of "I don't agree..." or "I don't believe..." are met with the likes of "You don't seem to understand..." You are saying you don't believe in something that is actual fact, something that actually has happened and still happens.

You don't understand. This issue here is not whether or not you believe these things happen. I quite clearly - even in the assessment of the person I'm not agree with - believe these things happen, that they are serious, and that they should not happen.

This hasn't dented your confidence in the simple binary narrative of either you believe or you don't believe in the slightest. Why?

Now, if you do believe that there is a problem then obviously there should be some discussion has to the nature and scope of the problem as well as what, if anything, there can or should be done about it.

Now we get down to the real brass tacks. This is where almost all the disagreement actually is.

I mean, to put a trivializing spin on this, one could argue from what I've said that the 'solution' to this problem is simply for men to beat the living tar out of any man they see doing this at a con or a gaming store, and then for the whole community to applaud that as the (as I put it) "human filth" were thrown out the door a bloody mess. But, it should be obvious at some level that not only was I not seriously advocating that as a solution, but speaking out of my anger at the whole idea this would happen, but such a 'solution' would have more than a few problems of its own. It certainly doesn't have the problem of not stepping up and tolerating this crap, but it has its own problems. And while I am trivializing my own words on this subject here by giving a straw man example of behavior in response to this, ultimately when we get down to pragmatics, a lot of the things we'd try to do have serious issues.

More over, there is a deeper level that we don't agree on, which for lack of a better term lets call 'alignment', and even all of us in the "not evil" camp that are like, "This is a bad thing", don't construct our view of the world, society, or even the idea of identity in the same fashion. The only thing we basically agree on is, "Don't be a jerk", but when we try to implement that I think we are going to be immediately shocked by what different people put not just in the jerk category but in the down right "not good" category.

To be quite frank about how deep this divide goes, there have been responses in agreement to me that I consider morally equivalent to a KKK ranting about racial superiority, and I feel pretty sure that other people have probably got the same view of things I'm saying. Even speaking in a common language that the other won't because of culture differences and assumptions won't find offensive is very hard, even when everyone in the conversation is committed to "doing something about" sexual harassment.

These are productive conversations.

Unfortunately, they are not, and this thread is a good example of why. For example, after saying that, you go right back to:

Unfortunately, if you refuse to believe in the problem, insist that the endless multitudes of stories of harassment and violence are all works of fiction, there is sadly nothing you can really add to that discussion and in fact all that you will be capable of doing is disrupting it.

You can't engage in a productive conversation on this topic if your assumptions are completely obdurate to what anyone is saying. Get through your head, the source of what we disagree over has nothing to do with whether or not this stuff happens or whether I believe it happens. Consider, you've decided to construct the argument that you just did, directly quoting a conversation between me and someone else where we both agree that the incidents in question happen, and yet you still constructed an argument based around a binary of whether or not someone believes this stuff happens. You had to have read the thread and paid close attention, or you couldn't have quoted it. But what you read had to figuratively bounce off your presumptions about this subject in order for you to respond the way you did.

The remainder of your argument is equally insulting and oblivious, so I won't even go to the trouble of responding to it. Why would I bother when its so completely clear that there are more fundamental problems here that you are still framing the debate in this manner?

Again, if we have to get our world views to line up in order to solve this, then we don't have much hope. If for example, whether we can work together to stop sexual harassment is predicated on us both constructing the notion of identity in the exact same way, and we first have to hash that out and if we can't we are reduced to shouting that the other is a "terrorist", then yeah, let's just close the thread.