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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6867570" data-attributes="member: 177">Imagine, for a moment, that this were not a virtual forum.  Imagine you were sitting in a room with the female gamers of this forum.  You look them in the eye, in person, and tell them, "I don't think what happens to women in gaming is bad enough that we need to discuss it."  I wonder how that would fly."We aren't as bad as others, so we get a pass!"  Really?  We don't have to work to be better so long as others are worse than us? That makes it an *excellent* place to discuss the matter.  We have a greater proportion of people who may be turned from passive, "I am not actively increasing the problem," to active, "I do things to reduce the problem."All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.And no, that's not the only concrete problem.   A friend of mine was working for a woman game-writer who had to move out of her apartment because she got doxxed and threatened - that's problematic.  But, the woman I know groped at a con was problematic.  A woman entering a game shop getting *stared* at like she was the gunslinger stepping into the saloon is problematic.  A woman being accused of making up stories of abuse is problematic.  *All* the incidents she lists in that article are concrete problems. The people who send those mails, and make those threats, do not do so in a vacuum.  They do so in the midst of a lingering culture that supports such activity.  That culture has its basis in the smaller forms of harassment and discrimination that still exist.  And those, we don't have to tolerate.  When there's a game store that allows behaviors like those described, they should have *men* standing up and telling their local communities that this is not okay.  I think you are on thin ice here, and will have to do some impressive rhetorical gymnastics to get, "She wrote an apparently non-fiction piece describing events that did not happen, *without* intent to deceive."  In the context of the piece, those vignettes are present to drive home the point that harassment and discrimination happen.  If those events did not happen (at least to *somebody*, if not the primary author), that's "make people believe these things are happening, when they don't," which is deception, and thus lying.I'm about to say something that may make you, and others, uncomfortable.  As we discuss if she's presenting untruth, we should consider why we might reject the factual truth of her statements.  Because we *do* have possible motives:1) If what she reports are true events, then we may have to admit that a group we *identify with* is not as nice as we like to think.  Since we identify with it, we tend to think this is an accusation that we, personally, are not as nice as we like to think.  We, quite naturally, will look for reasons to accuse the other person of flaws, rather than admit our own.  Humans quite frequently and demonstrably rationalize to attribute faults to others, rather than accept them in ourselves.2) If what she reports are true events, we are presented with a moral/ethical responsibility - as good people we should not allow these things to occur.  If what she describes is real, then we should *do* something, we should take action.  And who in this world really wants more responsibilities, more work - especially work that some of our peers may not like our taking on?  We, generally, will tend to seek for reasons why we might not have to take on that responsibility.  That fastest way to avoid that responsibility is to question her veracity.So, we have emotional and practical reasons to *want* to reject her presentation.  We need to be very careful about that.  These are some of the things that make us blind to mistreatment of others.</blockquote>

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