I want to make sure I understand you here: if a woman can't produce evidence of harassment or abuse while at a gaming venue, she should not be believed?
I'm speaking about people, both men and women. I never said that it was solely the victims responsibility to bring forth evidence. The staff could see if there are any witnesses, check camera footage (if its at a store/event with a camera), perhaps see if there are any other complaints about that specific person from others. There's a whole lot of area between "I totally believe you" and "I'm positive you're lying".
Moreover I want to stress what started this particular discussion - Hussar's claim that we need to instantly believe the person claiming they've been harassed or was offended and not ask any questions.
Snipping text is a way of reducing the footprint of a quote, so that readers don't have to scroll through a fat portion of text that's already been posted, just to get to the new response (something some folks around here are really bad about).
Just so we're clear, you snipped 2 sentences out of 6 or 7 sentences which coincidentally were very important to the distinctions I was making. I wasn't typing a novel, that response was 5 lines in total.
As to your question: for two long threads now you've continually brought up examples of women supposedly pulling the same kind of objectionable behavior that men undertake, and then advised that we all remain skeptical of claims of harassment (or worse) from women.
I'm fairly sure that the aforementioned rape/sexual assault case against the Canadian musician was the only specific example I've brought up and I've made it clear that the majority of the harassment is coming from men. Maybe there was a second that I can't recall, but that hardly constitutes "continually". You're using strong language to try and fan the flames. The harassment problem is endemic to the table top community, I'm continually bringing up instances of women doing bad things, etc.
Look, some women engage in harassing behavior. And some women experience harassment and sexual abuse at Cons. These are two different categories of people. No, really, they are in fact two different categories. Could there be overlap between them? Sure. However, by likening one group with the other to the point that you would advise Con staff be skeptical of claims of harassment, you are suggesting the area of overlap is extensive.
I agree. I've hardly touched on the aspect of women doing the harassing because the majority comes from men, and I've stated that repeatedly in the previous thread. Where did you get the idea that I was trying to over inflate the women harassers to posit an extreme overlap?
Worse, the more you press your argument, the more you erode the idea that a woman's word, by itself, is good enough to merit immediate and swift action by staff to correct a problem.
This line of reasoning seems dishonest, as I've made it crystal clear that what I'm advocating would apply both to men and women and here you are, with bolding text no less, painting my statements as if they're only applying to women. You've also switched up the argument here, we were talking about whether to believe the victim solely on their own word, now you've moved it to "swift action". I've said that I wasn't against separating the people involved, that's swift action. I'm perfectly ok with the staff being skeptical but still looking into the matter by questioning potential witnesses, looking at film, or keeping track of who's complaining against who and looking for patterns, that's swift action.
Please try and accurately represent what I'm saying.
We're long past the point of asking this question. Harassment and abuse of women in gaming is a major problem. The majority of harassers are male.
I understand the apprehensiveness to bring up something that's been settled, so perhaps you can point me to the discussion where this "harassment is endemic to the table top community" was established so I can look at both sides of the argument and decide for myself?
And I do agree that harassment is a problem, one instance is one too many and constitutes a problem. I agree that a sizeable portion of it is directed at women, and I agree that the majority of the harassers are male. I'm only questioning the "endemic" comment. Just like the 1:5 rape statistics on college campuses actually being 1:52, perhaps this problem is also being over exaggerated.
In other words, reduce the value of the voice of people who are harassed. This means the value of a woman's voice is reduced, because women are the subject of the majority of harassment.
*Sexual harassment*. If the tabletop community is the same as the gaming community or the internet as a whole, males receive more harassment overall than females. Females have higher complaints of stalking and sexual harassment, but overall males report higher harassment when looking at all types of harassment.
Moreover, while his example did specify women nothing else in his post did. His remedy to "Leave nothing up to the interpretation of the person making the complaint." was because "people" (not just women) would abuse it. Notice he specified "person" that was making the complaint, and not "woman". After the example he mentioned "people" 4 times and didn't mention gender a single time. I won't speak for him, but nothing he said necessitates that he was saying what you're suggesting he said. Perhaps that's how he feels, but you can't pull that from what he's said so far.
Your arguments and Rygar's argument merely work to reduce the voice of women in gaming. They also serve to drive women from this website.
No, your strong language and mischaracterization is. The harassment of women is endemic to the tabletop community, people who caution the idea that we should instantly, and unquestioningly, believe all harassment claims are actually people who just want to diminish the voices of women, posters are "continually" bringing up supposed harassment enacted by women to water down the issue, etc.
