Harassment in gaming

[Dannyalcatraz]

To be fair, if your job is the enforcer of discipline in an organization, "What did he say?" is actually an appropriate- arguably necessary- question when dealing with allegations of language creating a hostile work environment.

Speaking from experience, I know of a situation in which a woman heard "menstrual" when the speaker said "minstrel" in a particular sentence. Since the error was caught, there was no need to go at the speaker.

 

[Hussar]

To be fair, if your job is the enforcer of discipline in an organization, "What did he say?" is actually an appropriate- arguably necessary- question when dealing with allegations of language creating a hostile work environment.

Speaking from experience, I know of a situation in which a woman heard "menstrual" when the speaker said "minstrel" in a particular sentence. Since the error was caught, there was no need to go at the speaker.

Now, let's use this as an example. Say the woman does go to the convention staff and says that buddy said something offensive and she wants to make a complaint.

How much would you expect the management at a gaming convention to do to actually ascertain the truth? Wouldn't it be far easier, and probably standard policy just to pull buddy aside, give him a verbal warning and then keep an eye out for any other complaints about buddy?

Granted, you're talking about a different issue as well - hostile work environment, which has it's own issues. But, again, AFAIC, in any larger company I've worked in, a single comment is not harassment. Especially not a "hostile work environment" issue. Policies I've seen usually start with someone making a complaint, and then the behaviour has to continue after the complaint is made. If I go to my HR person and make a complaint, it's not like they're going to fire the person I'm complaining about on the spot. They're going to give that person a warning, probably several - at least one verbal, and one formal written, before even considering firing that person.

There is absolutely no way that a single comment can be construed as creating a hostile work environment.

 

[MechaPilot]

As someone who was harassed (not at a convention, but harassed all the same), I'd like to chime in about having to tell what was said to whom you're reporting the the incident.


Let's, for the sake of discussion, say that my harassment experience happened at a convention and that I had reported it.*

What I would reasonably expect to happen as part of the reporting process is that my harasser and I would both be separately pulled aside, and that I would to have to give some kind of description of what happened to me so that the convention staff could then decide what level of response was appropriate: a formal warning, ejection, lifetime ban, putting the boots to him.**


Now let's get into the arena of what I believe should happen with me in that situation.

If I had to recount that experience while it was still relatively fresh, I would have preferred to have been given a nice safe room to sit in (even a relatively small one) that was away from my accuser, and that was free of an audience in front of whom I would have been embarrassed and a little ashamed to recount my story.

I also would want a plain-clothes female representative to speak to: her being female would reduce but not eliminate the feelings of being threatened that would arise while recounting my story. The plain-clothes aspect would also help assuage some of the intimidation of talking to an authority figure: I may be a white girl with no criminal background, but I still get nervous talking to security and police.


Now let's talk about the accused.

What I would reasonably expect is that security would take down his information, that would probably include a picture of him to help them find him again later if it were necessary. I would expect them to pull him aside and ask him what his version of the story is. I would also expect them to warn him not to leave the premises, in case my accusation included him committing a prosecutable crime. And, I would expect them to keep an eye on him at least until after I had completed my report, but ideally for the remainder of the convention.

I would also expect security to take down the information of those nearby who were potentially witnesses to what happened, and to pull them aside and interview them as to what they hear/saw. Individually pulling them aside is important. A potential witness may feel intimidated to speak in front of other players who may have been complicit.***



Now let's talk resolution.

After my full complaint had been filed, I would expect security to have a follow-up talk with the accused and the potential witnesses, as well as to check any available audio or video footage for potential evidence.

If my claim were corroborated by witnesses (technological or otherwise) then I would expect punitive action to be taken. Naturally, we may not all agree on what level of action is necessary, so I'm omitting that for now so that I can focus on the process of handling the complaints. However, if the punishment did not include removing the accused from the convention, I would expect security to keep an eye on both of us for the safety of both of us and those who would be around us if a confrontation later occurred.

If my claim were not corroborated (as would have been the case in the harassment experience that I related), then I would expect security to keep an eye on both of us, so as to prevent any retaliation from either party: be aware that the accused could go after the accuser for reporting the issue, and that the harassed party, when fear turns to anger, could potentially call relatives or friends to help settle the score (as a prime example of this, although I am currently talking about handling instances of harassment, if I were to call my father in tears and tell him that I was sexually assaulted or raped, he'd drive down to the convention center armed to the teeth and looking for blood).



* In reality, I probably would not have reported it because (if you recall what my harassment experience was) I would have assumed the other players would have backed up the DM who harassed me. In the case of those specific players, I feel very confident they would have backed the DM against my accusation if it had happened at a con.

** This last punishment example is intended to be humorous. But, at the time of my actual harassment experience it was what I really wanted someone to do to that DM, and to the players who just sat by getting their jollies by watching him do that to me.

*** In my case, this would have been useless because the players all would have backed the DM, but that's also because all those players knew each other for quite a while and were not strangers meeting to play together at a con.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Now, let's use this as an example. Say the woman does go to the convention staff and says that buddy said something offensive and she wants to make a complaint.

How much would you expect the management at a gaming convention to do to actually ascertain the truth? Wouldn't it be far easier, and probably standard policy just to pull buddy aside, give him a verbal warning and then keep an eye out for any other complaints about buddy?

Granted, you're talking about a different issue as well - hostile work environment, which has it's own issues. But, again, AFAIC, in any larger company I've worked in, a single comment is not harassment. Especially not a "hostile work environment" issue. Policies I've seen usually start with someone making a complaint, and then the behaviour has to continue after the complaint is made. If I go to my HR person and make a complaint, it's not like they're going to fire the person I'm complaining about on the spot. They're going to give that person a warning, probably several - at least one verbal, and one formal written, before even considering firing that person.

There is absolutely no way that a single comment can be construed as creating a hostile work environment.

I would expect security & admin- regardless of formality, be it cops, rent-a-cops, that big dude Murray, whomever- to ask what happened of each party before deciding what to do to/for either party unless they are actually eyewitnesses to the event.

Now, that kind of puts them in the judge/jury/executioner position, but that isn't really avoidable

 

[Ovinomancer]

How's this for a hypothetical [MENTION=6667193]sunshadow21[/MENTION]?

You're part of the management of a gaming convention. A woman comes to you and says that John Doe (whose name she actually gives) said things to her and she is very offended. She wants you to do something.

"What did he say?" is NOT the right answer.

The right answer is to tell the woman that you will get right on it. You then go to John Doe and say, "Look, friend, there has been a complaint about you. This is a formal warning. If there are any other complaints about you during this convention, you will be asked to leave."

And THAT'S how you handle that.

What he said, how he said it or anything else doesn't matter one whit. You should ALWAYS err on the side of caution. If John Doe hadn't actually said anything or it was just a misunderstanding, then there will not be any more complaints about John Doe for the convention and no harm, no foul. End of problem. OTOH, if there are more complaints about John Doe, then you simply eject John Doe and again, this is the right answer.

"Is your harassment complaint legitimate enough to me that I should get up and do something about it" is 100% completely the wrong answer.

Let's follow this a bit. I feel offended by your post. I report you to the mods. They can't ask me what was offensive or investigate to determine severity. They issue you your one warning. You will be banned from ENW for any other infraction.

This is fair and necessary, right? Be warned, though, I'll likely find your response offensive (can't ask why) and you'll be banned. This is a proper outcome, though, as we're all erring on the side of caution.

 

[Springheel]

You're part of the management of a gaming convention. A woman comes to you and says that John Doe (whose name she actually gives) said things to her and she is very offended. She wants you to do something.

"What did he say?" is NOT the right answer.

The right answer is to tell the woman that you will get right on it. You then go to John Doe and say, "Look, friend, there has been a complaint about you. This is a formal warning. If there are any other complaints about you during this convention, you will be asked to leave."

And THAT'S how you handle that.

What he said, how he said it or anything else doesn't matter one whit.

You can't be serious.

You do realize there are people who get "offended" by the most innocuous of comments? Suppose the woman feels "very offended" because John Doe is playing a female character who the woman decides is too flirty. Suppose the woman feels "very offended" because John Doe explained some rules of the game to her in a way she thought was condescending. Suppose she feels "very offended" because John Doe's character history explains that his half-orc was the product of rape. Or perhaps she feels "very offended" because John was wearing a "Trump 2016" T-shirt (perhaps she goes to the Emory University).

Are ANY of those activities worthy of asking someone to leave a convention?

The moment you start accusing people of wrong-doing based ONLY on someone's feelings, you immediately give up any claim to fairness, impartiality, and consistency.

 

[sunshadow21]

"Is your harassment complaint legitimate enough to me that I should get up and do something about it" is 100% completely the wrong answer.

It's less about viewing the complaint as legitimate or not and far more about having the necessary information to actually do something genuinely effective. Just issuing warnings to people who may not have the slightest idea of why they are being warned does absolutely nothing to fix the problem. Zero tolerance policies that automatically assume that the accusation is correct will ultimately cause as much harm as good because you are not actually giving the type of information needed for others to actually learn what needs to change. You are simply telling them that someone doesn't like them and that doesn't provide any kind of help to someone who might have been doing it completely unintentionally. Everyone keeps assuming that the harrassment is legitimate and that the harrsser fully understood what effect they were having on the accuser. In this day and age where people seem increasingly convinced that they are free to interpret things however they feel they want to and have no responsibility to attempt to understand what was actually intended, I cannot assume that the complaint is for an intentional act. I have never said don't take it seriously or to brush off the complaint. I am simply saying that if you are going to create and enforce a policy, it needs to be geniunely fair to everyone. Your hypothetical solution doesn't actually resolve anything when increasingly the chances of the person being accused not actually understanding why they are getting the warning and therefore have no ability to reduce their chances of getting another one are quite high.

If a person has so big of a problem that they cannot effectively articulate it sufficiently for the convention staff to give an effective warning that lets the person know at the mimimum what triggered the warning, that person does not need to be in that situation without some kind of help or supervision, because they cannot expect convention staff to intervene on their behalf effectively if they (or a friend) cannot effectively translate at least the nub of the problem from their head to someone else's. I get that people need to be careful about how they ask the necessary questions and convention staff should absolutely get at least some training on effective conflict resolution, but the people complaining about this behavior have to learn that they are as much part of the solution (or problem as the case may be) as the convention staff or those being accused of harassment. Simply saying "I'm being harassed" is not enough; if the person is doing it unintentionally and that's all they get told, they can't fix it. If the person is doing it intentionally, there may be grounds for immediate removal or even greater powers getting involved immediately. Simply assuming that all claims are true and doing absolutely zero investigation may solve the immediate issue someone was having, but it does so by potentially creating bad feelings toward the topic and deprives everyone else of the deeper level of information needed to genuinely understand the problem.

Trying to prevent these people from suffering anything in the short term actually helps create the environment in which they will continue to be at greater risk of feeling pain repeatedly in the future. That is the biggest reason I thoroughly despise this line of thinking. People who have that kind of deep problem never learn how to actually deal with it sufficiently to be comfortable around others and others never learn enough about why it's a problem to be able to adapt their actions to be proactive in combatting it rather than relying solely on a convention staffer coming up to them and telling them they did something someone didn't like. People who see these moments solely from the perspective of the person making the claim fail to understand half the problem; it is not just about enforcing an anti-harassment policy, though that is certainly part of it. It is possible, and our society is getting really close to this, to get so focused on individuals and their problems that we forget to each ourselves and each other the necessary skills and empathies needed to function in public without some kind of outside help (in this case, convention staff or a game store manager). People who are so afraid of being hurt that they can't even tell the proper authority why they were hurt need to learn that functioning in society requires a bit of effort on their part as well a bit of effort on everyone else's part; dealing with negative emotions effectively (or at least effectively enough to get along in public) is simply something that everyone has to learn because it's something that everyone has to deal with at some point or another.

Our society has become so terrified of dealing with anything negative that a lot of people have concept of how to deal with it when it becomes unavoidable, and that's where much of the core problem lies. Past generations never had these issues to the degree we see them today because they had ways of dealing with and addressing them that our current society lacks because we have become terrified of rejection, risk, and pain in general. Proceeding with caution does not mean completely shielding the accuser from any pain or backlash that may come from any particular difficulty. If someone came up to me and made a complaint based solely on the phrase "I'm being harassed," I cannnot help them. Even if I give a formal warning to whoever they want me to like you suggest, I have not helped them. They still lack the ability to be truly comfortable in that public space because they have no idea if the message was fully understood, and everyone around them lacks the knowledge about what triggered the incident to make things easier for them to come to terms with the problem. All I have done is put myself in a situation where I am ultimately the bad guy to both sides, because chances are very good that unless I automatically assume that every complaint is valid and end up throwing out half the attendees, I am being insensitive to the needs of those who rightly or wrongly believe themselves to be victims, and everyone else is left being very annoyed with me that I didn't even make an attempt at due process for those being accused.

I guess for me it comes down to the fact that it very much feels like a lot of people feel that they have the right to interpret everything they see or hear however they see fit, but at the same time expect everyone else to fully respect their own personal intentions and thought when trying to interpret their actions and words. They cannot have it both ways. Either everyone is free to interpret things however they please and everybody better grow a real thick skin real quick or there must be some expectation of not just assuming the worst and that others are not bound to act based upon you assuming the worst. The legitimacy of the claim is usually not the actual reason a manager or staff member would want to carry out at least some kind of investigation, and people who are so sensitive that they are incapable of distinguishing between a legitimate investigation and criticism should not put themselves in a situation that they might need to. Whether that means bringing a friend to help cover the details they cannot easily manage or accepting that they simply need to remove themselves from that public space until they can manage those details sufficiently for those in charge to do more than a token slap on the wrist of someone who may not even understand why their wrist is being slapped.

This may mean that some people simply won't be able to go certain conventions or gaming stores until they figure out how to deal with their problems enough to get along in public; if that is the case, so be it, the world will not stop spinning because one individual doesn't get everything they want when they want it. Just because I have a deep personal problem (and everyone does at some point or another) does not mean that I am justified in believing that I can go anywhere I want and force complete strangers to deal with the fact that I have a problem. Any resolution of that problem begins with me; others can help, but in order to do so, they have to have sufficient knowledge to do so, and if I am not comfortable providing it, it is unreasonable for me to expect them to reach a resolution that I am comfortable with. The ability of others to help is entirely dependent on my own ability to articulate the problem effectively; the vast majority of people don't read minds and I for one like it that way. The expectation that all I have to say is I'm being harassed is sufficient to solve the problem just pushes the problem down the road without solving anything and it stands a good chance of making things worse.

 

[Taneras]

You're part of the management of a gaming convention. A woman comes to you and says that John Doe (whose name she actually gives) said things to her and she is very offended. She wants you to do something.

"What did he say?" is NOT the right answer.

It absolutely is the correct response. What if the comment was as mild as "Man that boss fight was pretty crazy, glad we all survived!"? If that's all that it was she needs to learn how to resolve these minor issues on her own. She can either understand that odds are the person who made that comment wasn't purposefully trying to put down people who are crazy and is just using that phrase to describe a hectic and out of control situation that the party managed to navigate through successfully. She can talk to the person nicely and inform them that some people might find that phrase offensive and ask that person to consider that fact next time (although that'd likely give her a bad rep, people don't like feeling like they have to walk on egg shells around others).

The right answer is to tell the woman that you will get right on it. You then go to John Doe and say, "Look, friend, there has been a complaint about you. This is a formal warning. If there are any other complaints about you during this convention, you will be asked to leave."

And THAT'S how you handle that.

What if the harassment/offensive comments are actually bad enough to kick that person out of the event right then and there? You wouldn't know because you didn't ask what was said...

What he said, how he said it or anything else doesn't matter one whit.

So again, if I find your comments about how convention staff should handle complaints about being offended, should a moderator step in and give you a warning?

EDIT: I'd like to point out again that when I made a comment about how far some people want this to go I was laughed at. There is an element in our community that thinks that "I'm offended" is some sort of magical incantation that allows them to get their way. I've seen it eat away at some of the other communities I've been apart of, this was one of the only reasons I actually joined this forum. I've lurked for a *long* time but felt the need to throw my two cents in about this issue.

 

[evilbob]

The "Duke lacrosse team" example is overused to the point of nonsense.

Let's do some math. There are ~15,000 students at Duke. We'll pretend that 7500 of them are women (probably more). Of those 7500, ~20% - 1500 - will be sexually assaulted while at Duke, on average. Number of students on the Lacross team? About 50? So there are still a 30:1 ratio of false accusations to average sexual assaults at Duke alone for that single year. Now let's add all the other colleges where there WEREN'T false accusations that year: ~12 million (under 25), half of whom (really more) are women. That's about a 1.2 million to 1 ratio of sexual assaults to false reports IN ONE YEAR. Now let's add all the other years that there WEREN'T false accusations at Duke, or any other college, but there continued to sexual assaults. The point is obvious. Even if you think the 20% number is wrong and it's closer to 2%, that's still hundreds of thousands more assaults than false reports.

Using the Duke lacrosse team as a counter example is like saying, "that one time, someone who was wearing a seat belt died because of it." That one time. Out of thousands of lives saved every day. You can't justify never wearing a seat belt because of that one time, and you can't justify a muted or non-existent response to sexual assault because of a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of false reports.

Yes: false reports are horrible. You know what else is horrible? The hundreds of thousands (or maybe millions) of sexual assaults that happen per single false report. The numbers are incomparable, so the idea that one equals the other is ludicrous. The idea that because one can happen we still need to err on the side of the one that happens maybe a million times less often is ludicrous. The idea that nothing needs to be done is ludicrous.

But false reports are scary to men: that's the only difference. Even though women are assaulted zillions of times more often, that doesn't affect most men in a direct way - but false reports! That could affect ME! That's the only reason why false reports are elevated to such a scare level, and why they are cast time and again as a reasonable response to sexual assault responses when in fact they are trivial in comparison.

(There are many other examples in politics right now of similar comparisons which are nonsense but are nonetheless SO SCARY to the people in charge that they outweigh the nonsense. Trans people assaulting women in bathrooms, for example.)

 

[Rygar]

How's this for a hypothetical @sunshadow21?

You're part of the management of a gaming convention. A woman comes to you and says that John Doe (whose name she actually gives) said things to her and she is very offended. She wants you to do something.

"What did he say?" is NOT the right answer.

The right answer is to tell the woman that you will get right on it. You then go to John Doe and say, "Look, friend, there has been a complaint about you. This is a formal warning. If there are any other complaints about you during this convention, you will be asked to leave."

And THAT'S how you handle that.

What he said, how he said it or anything else doesn't matter one whit. You should ALWAYS err on the side of caution. If John Doe hadn't actually said anything or it was just a misunderstanding, then there will not be any more complaints about John Doe for the convention and no harm, no foul. End of problem. OTOH, if there are more complaints about John Doe, then you simply eject John Doe and again, this is the right answer.

"Is your harassment complaint legitimate enough to me that I should get up and do something about it" is 100% completely the wrong answer.

Ok, now let's consider what will happen in the real world.

I'm in a Magic the Gathering tournament at the con. I end up in the top 8, there's one person with a deck that can consistently beat mine. So I have a plan I setup earlier. I call a female friend that came to the convention separately and have her go report the guy for making an offensive rape joke. Wait 15 minutes, call a second female friend and have her report him for inappropriately touching her.

By your standards he's out, and I win the tournament.

That's the problem with these policies that permit anyone to declare "Harassment" by allowing them to define what is harassment and then making the mistake of following Anita's "Listen and Believe", it's trivial to exploit them to gain advantage in competitions or to eliminate people who disagree with you (I.e. Honey Badgers incident last year).

"I'm offended" isn't enough. "I feel harassed" isn't enough. The only way to handle this is to clearly define cause for ejection in the convention's documentation and leave nothing up to the interpretation of the person making the complaint, because otherwise people are just going to do what they're doing right now, exploiting it to eject people they don't like or don't want to be at the con.