Harassment in gaming

[Umbran]

While that is true, it's always important to recall that all corporations ultimately have to answer to their shareholders

Not true, in the sense that many (in fact, probably the majority in terms of numbers) companies are privately held, not publicly traded. We are tempted to say that, well, the private owner is still a "shareholder", but the difference is likely not trivial. For a publicly traded company, the shareholders are effectively nameless, faceless, distant, and generally interested only in the money. In privately held companies, you are talking about a small number of individuals with personal approaches that aren't washed out by statistics and distance.

This is dreadfully important when the company in question is, for example, a game store. I have nearly no ability to influence the policies of, say, my local Barnes & Noble, as it answers to the large swath of faceless shareholders that influence corporate policy. But, I know by name the owners of the two FLGS, and I play live-action games with one on a regular basis. These guys can be influenced by my reasoned arguments, where my local B&N cannot.

 

[Rechan]

Guys here have asked "What can we do about this?" This article, along with going over some of the rhetorical arguments presented in this thread, gives direct advice to male allies:

ASK women about their experiences in gaming. A large chunk of the problem’s persistence is that a woman who gets offended/hit on/etc. and leaves doesn’t actually cause the majority of sensible male gamers to DO ANYTHING. “Oh, yeah, Stephanie…nobody’s seen her in two weeks? I guess she got a new job or something and didn’t tell us.” Smiling monsters rely on your not following up with their victims to get the space they need to operate.

LISTEN to what they say. Remember, they’re feeling isolated, and they feel like nobody will believe them over the other men at the table. Don’t accuse them of exaggerating. Don’t “put them in the witness box” — just listen. It won’t be comfortable. Time and time again, I’ve been told that the single most valuable thing I ever did was listen, so that she didn’t feel she was facing this alone. As a guy, it’s REALLY hard to believe that _just_ listening is that helpful, but it’s observably true.

WATCH for signs of discomfort. Women take up different body language when they feel threatened. They close their bodies off; they cross their arms in front of their chest as if they expect to get hit. They move to a chair on the other side of the table to get away from someone. They lean away from someone at a table to maximize the space between them or to preserve their personal space. These are all cues. If you see these signs, go back to “ASK” — you can ask “Are you OK?” If someone is getting close to a woman showing these body language cues, ask him “Hey, wait a minute. Do you know her?”

PAY ATTENTION to what other people are saying. We get it. Guys in the gaming hobby treat it like an old boy’s club, or chatter in the gym locker room. They can talk about whatever they feel like! They can crack rape jokes. They can crack blonde jokes. They can make comments like “old enough to bleed, old enough to breed.” The uncomfortable woman probably won’t make a confrontation, because she’s unsure if she’s got any support in the room at all. That’s your job. Let her know that she’s NOT ALONE in thinking this is unacceptable behavior.

LOOK FOR ESCALATIONS. A lot of guys think that bawdy humor is “just part of gaming.” It absolutely can be with a group of people who know each other well. Unfortunately, at conventions and in game stores, bawdy humor is used by smiling monsters as a way to “gain permission” to do more. The pattern looks like this: Tell an edgy joke, see if anyone looks nervous before they laugh. Wait for people to calm down a bit, and tell a slightly more sexual joke. Repeat, and each repetition, escalate to more sexually explicit humor. Try touching a shoulder to “reassure.” Smiling monsters take laughing at raunchy jokes as evidence that they’re concealed by the social contract. They also get a thrill out of pushing the boundary of the social contract; it’s how they “win the game” in their head.

COMMUNICATE with someone who looks uncomfortable. Don’t let them wander off feeling like nobody cares. Ask simple things like “Are you OK?” and listen to what’s said. If they need to go to convention security, get them to convention security. If they just want to leave, separate them from the people harassing them and let them leave on their own, or ask the harasser to leave. It’s the person who’s made uncomfortable’s choice about who leaves the situation, not yours.

CALL PEOPLE OUT on bad manners. Explain that bad manners have consequences. Explain that this is a public space, and they can either conform to the expected standards of behavior or they can leave. Or you can threaten to leave — this is a pedal democracy; people show their displeasure by leaving. I’ve told gaming tables “You can have me playing, or your rape jokes. Choose now.”

KEEP AN EYE OUT for smiling monsters. Once you learn to spot them, they’re easy to recognize. They don’t make eye contact with other men or figures of authority, until they’re confronted. They tend to have head gestures (nodding or shaking their head) that are completely opposite of what their words are saying. They’re not prepared for follow-up questions. They get nervous when you talk to their prey, and start edging away. They escalate on raunchy humor, like what’s described above. They have a habit of boldly invading the personal space of anyone female, in ways that they wouldn’t do to a man.

 

[Rechan]

#2) I don't recall seeing any prestige classes that weren't available to both genders. That said, I didn't have a massive collection of books for 3e, so there may have been some that existed in books that I never owned.

I can think of a couple. I don't own the books anymore, but yeah, some all-female Organizations (like the church of that good drow deity).

 

[Rechan]

I know we're no longer debating whether these claims are made up/exaggerated/etc but I wanted to add one more point to the issue:

This happens to guys too, and they don't report it. They often don't make a scene, it's uncomfortable and unwelcome too.

I'm a furry, I go to furry cons. There, the orientation split is very different (surveys show the makeup is about 40 straight/40 bi/20 gay). People are also a little more open about who they are and sexual topics are more acceptable to discuss. Unwelcome attentions happen; guys get groped, they get propositioned lewdly. It's bad enough that there's a warning going around that you don't hug a fursuiter without asking first. And otherwise guys can just be made uncomfortable. I've been in that situation before; I've been aggressively flirted with by men I considered friends, and even though I knew they were being playful, it still left me as a straight guy uncomfortable and overwhelmed. If they'd been strangers, I'd have ran.

I bring this up because the guys getting harassed don't report it. They don't make a big scene, or punch the offender. Because cons until recently didn't have harassment policies, because you don't want to Make A Scene, because most of us are socially awkward and uncomfortable and don't have the confidence to say something more than 'no thanks' or avoid the people. Not everyone's reaction is to stand up and be aggressively defensive; most of us just hope the uncomfortable situation passes.

And there's no "evidence" of it. Unless a third party witnesses it (and is willing to say one way or the other), it's a he said/he said.

 

[MechaPilot]

The gender-specific ability score maxima were introduced in the 1st Edition PHB in 1978 (possibly in The Dragon before that) and were removed in the 2nd Edition PHB in 1989. I don't think they ever appeared in the D&D (as opposed to AD&D) line.

Thank you for the historical info.

Not quite - the 2nd Ed PHB also made exclusive use of the masculine pronouns, and had a sidebar early on explaining why they felt this was appropriate. With 3e they used both 'he' and 'she', largely tying those to the Iconics (that is, the iconic Wizard was female, so any time they referred to a Wizard they used 'she'; the iconic Fighters were male, so any time they referred to a Fighter they used 'he'). For 4e they dropped the iconics, but I think continued alternating 'he' and 'she'.

The use of different pronouns, like the art included in the books, is a matter of presentation: they are not the game itself. To put it another way, it doesn't matter what color of plastic your super mario bros game cartridge is, it's always going to be super mario bros when you plug it in your NES.

Although it was breath of fresh air to open the BtVS RPG books and find she/her used instead of him/he, I was never really bothered in any measurable way by the masculine personal pronoun usage. If all the personal pronouns in a book changed from he to she (or she to he, because some RPGs do use she instead), the actual play of the game wouldn't change. Therefore, I cannot reasonably see counting that as a change in the game itself.

That said, please don't pretend that I'm dismissing the value of presentation. I like books with better art than books with poorly-executed art. I like full-color images more than black and white (most of the time. I think B&W fits for certain themes though, like horror themes. And, I think sepia tones work well for pseudo-historical settings). Plus, as I mentioned before, not relying so heavily on the pin-up style of art has made it so that I don't feel embarrassed to show off the books to other women who might be interested in the game.

So I definitely understand the value of presentation, and how some types of presentation can be off-putting to certain groups, but I don't think we can reasonably call a change in presentation to be a change in the actual game itself.

 

[MechaPilot]

I know we're no longer debating whether these claims are made up/exaggerated/etc but I wanted to add one more point to the issue:

This happens to guys too, and they don't report it. They often don't make a scene, it's uncomfortable and unwelcome too.

Guys definitely don't report being sexual assaulted/raped as often as it happens, or even as often as female victims do.

When a female victim comes forward, she does wrongly face judgments about how she dressed and acted, despite the assault/rape itself always being wrong. However, there's also the general assumption that the assailant/rapist was stronger than the female victim was (which is probably more often true than not).

When a male victim comes forward, people often wrongly question his sexuality and his manhood under the wrong-headed assumption that he should have been strong enough to defend himself, and that he must have wanted it to happen if he didn't defend himself.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah, in that sense, it is worse for guys that report harassment or sexual assault. They aren't just victimized, they often get completely devalued as men, sometimes even by their friends.

 

[MechaPilot]

Not true, in the sense that many (in fact, probably the majority in terms of numbers) companies are privately held, not publicly traded. We are tempted to say that, well, the private owner is still a "shareholder", but the difference is likely not trivial. For a publicly traded company, the shareholders are effectively nameless, faceless, distant, and generally interested only in the money. In privately held companies, you are talking about a small number of individuals with personal approaches that aren't washed out by statistics and distance.

This is dreadfully important when the company in question is, for example, a game store. I have nearly no ability to influence the policies of, say, my local Barnes & Noble, as it answers to the large swath of faceless shareholders that influence corporate policy. But, I know by name the owners of the two FLGS, and I play live-action games with one on a regular basis. These guys can be influenced by my reasoned arguments, where my local B&N cannot.

You're right that the difference between shareholders and private owners is not trivial. Even in publicly traded companies, when one shareholder is the majority shareholder, she can make corporate decisions that go against the other shareholders' wishes.

As far as local game stores go, I think most of them are not corporations. Most small businesses are sole proprietorships, partnerships, or LLCs, because of the pass-thru nature of those entities as opposed to the double taxation faced with C corps. Although, some of these businesses may be S corps.



Also, I'm a tax accountant. Any of you out there with a U.S. partnership interest, or an interest in an LLC taxed as a partnership, need to make sure that your accountant is up to speed on the change in the partnership taxation rules that were passed into law and will come into effect in 2018.

 

[Umbran]

As far as local game stores go, I think most of them are not corporations. Most small businesses are sole proprietorships, partnerships, or LLCs

LLC is "limited liability corporation".

 

[MechaPilot]

LLC is "limited liability corporation".

LLCs are defined by state law and, to the best of my understanding, some states call them a "Limited Liability Company."

But that was a nice catch.