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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 6870918" data-attributes="member: 725">I foolishly clicked the link and read the article, first thing that goes through my mind: "Not this crap again! Why did I click this?". The I read "I am thirteen years old..." and I start getting angry, after reading the whole damn article I'm asking myself "In what kind of god damned hell is she living/gaming in!?!?".I know people are horrible, both men and women are equal opportunity offenders in that regard. But this experience is extreme!That comment from a grown man to a 13 year old girl would have made me take that old metal 40k dreadnought, put it in a sock and start beating that grown man! And if any of those kids were significantly older then 13, they would have been next... Kids can and will be extremely cruel to each other, that's not the worst thing I've heard a 13 year old say to another.Geeks and Nerds tend to be... not socially apt, especially not around the opposite sex. Staring, awkward and inappropriate comments are to be expected, especially in the 9-21 year age bracket. Sure you can say "They should be better!", but if the were, they wouldn't be the social awkward geeks/nerds in the first place. But behavior that goes beyond gawking at women to touching without consent, sexual assault and rape are... Inexcusable! That's not a geek/nerd/gaming problem that's a generic problem in society, that happens in all social and hobby groups. Even though we all would like to think it doesn't happen in gaming, it just would surprise me if it didn't happen in gaming, but just in clubbing, frats, sports, etc.Not learning self defense is foolish imho, not because she's a woman, but because she's a person. I'm a guy, I advise all kids to start judo/karate early in life and make your teacher teach you practical stuff that you can use on the 'street' if your in trouble. Because while girls/women might have to deal with sexual assault/rape, the non-alpha males often get the crap beaten out of them "Just because..."'. And while that might not be as bad as sexual assault/rape, it is more socially acceptable and often ignored, so it happens quite often in that young age bracket. Being a victim might not be your fault, but making sure your not a victim makes your life a whole lot more pleasant then being right and pointing out how wrong someone else is...You can never really know whether your gaming with Hannibal or Theresa, no one ever really does when interacting with other people. But you can use common sense, gut feeling, etc. People who've known me for years or even all my life are still surprised at how aggressive and viscous I can be when I or others are threatened in my presence. Not that that has happened often since leaving school behind me, looking like someone one does not want to mess with helps though ;-) Talking about defense mechanisms...The only 'sexual assault' I've ever personally encountered is when I was 9-10, boys doing things to girls. I interfered, got my ass kicked, stood up interfered, got my... Rinse and repeat until they got tired of me. The kicker in that case was that I got looks from the girls involved that convened "What the hell are you doing interfering!". Not that something like that would stop me in the future, I've just made sure that I can do the ass kicking...The Internet... Well... That's a whole different piece of cake. The worst thing I've ever done over the Internet is to a girl, a Shadowrun site called Shadowland BBS back in the day. We were young, everything was still drama, every 'problem' we had was live changing, etc. One of the regular chatters was a girl whose handle I've forgotten, but after a while it became clear that she wanted to be the center of attention, a dramaqueen, hinting at to0 much and chat sometimes became... Unhealthy for all involved. Some of us warned her that this wasn't healthy and this could attract the wrong kind of attention, she was adamant that no one knew her real name or where she lived. What she forgot that over all that chat over many months we all had revealed some personal details, enough for me to find out where she lived (on campus), I emailed her roommate that she should get a 'grip' and send an aerial photograph with their dorm circled. That freaked her out pretty much and luckily made her more careful in later conversations. This is something like 20 years ago, so nothing like social media is now, folks weren't so open on the Internet like they are now. There's a reason, why I'm not on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn... ;-) While at the time I was focused on proving how easy it was to find out who someone is and where they live, not realizing how much that could scare someone.That said, on the Internet folks can be everything they can't be in real live, threats don't surprise me. By now everyone has had them to a lesser or greater extent. If they are systemic and the police won't act, hire a private investigator, in this day and age tracking those folks isn't hard. Because most of them are indeed mindless dicks that don't know how to make themselves untraceable, even if they think they are, they are often not. It's not the first time that arrogant pricks that are supposed to know something about computers forget the social aspect of the Internet and forget how much personal information they leave lying around. Personally I've had very little interaction with the police, especially none with regards to threats, sexual assault or rape. So I can't say anything about how the police act, is this specific to this particular Canadian city? Canada? North America? This doesn't sound familiar to someone living in Western Europe...The only part of this whole article I have a problem with is that it's talking about white male gamers as if we all do this... We don't, the folks I've played with over the last 28 years don't. And if someone is found out to do something like THAT, he's corrected with a heavy hand, if not kicked out. If I found out something like that happened to a Con I attended, they might have a murder on their hands instead of a rape... I hope I'm not the only one...That said, I think that sexual assault and rape are in different galaxies from the male nerds/geeks staring at a girl/woman in the game store, being awkward, not knowing what to say around them, often being smitten. I was one of those awkward nerds, but again touching without permission would never ever happen, nor sexual threats! I don't know whether to blame the hormones during puberty or society (bullying)? Till age 8, most of my friends were female... It took until age 21 until I changed a bit from a total social inept introvert to someone that's skilled at communicating with people, I'm still a weird nerd though ;-) Weird thing happened, I was sat down by my manager at my first fulltime job after six months and what he said made such an impression that something clicked and I did a 180 regarding how I communicate with people. The problem is that many geeks/nerds never have that sitdown moment and something goes click, they always stay those socially inept introverts. That is not something you can change by wanting it to happen, not by force (of arms or will)...On the other hand I think it's not bad advise from the police to treat certain social groups with care and maybe not associate with them. There's a reason why mom never wanted you to hang out with the Hell's Angels, not go to fratboy parties, etc. I personally think that if a female joined our RPG group when I was age 11-21 I think we would all have had a bad time. Not because I hated girls, but because being awkward around them doesn't mean fun for anyone involved... I just didn't know how to handle them. I did game with women though, but often at the gaming club (often board/cardgames), these were older women. I was the youngest person around by 10-20 years, I could handle older people a lot better then kids my own age (of any gender).As for racism, I don't see that often from people my own age, often from older folks. But can't remember anyone in gaming being racist. Growing up in a multi cultural society as a kid kind of... Makes you immune to the <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> about race... I think... I hope... Might be a NA thing? That said, I don't know many black people that game, a 20 year old gaming buddy is half Turkish and and my best friend at school was from Hong Kong, but most gamers are white. Not strange when 80%+ of our population is white, not all that strange that 1 in 5 of us is not white. Also not that strange that we don't see that many black gamers when only ~3% of the population is black... Stats in NA might be different...I also don't buy in game stores anymore, for around 15 years now (started with D&D 3E).#1 Price#2 Time#3 SelectionI generally play with friends, I'm not a big fan of pickup games. I'm also not a fan of Cons for the same reasons. Gaming clubs depend on the people, I kinda miss the old group in Amsterdam...Overall, it's just sad and enraging that something like this happened anywhere.imho a whole different animal then a Conan Brom painting with a half naked women, a cover of a chainmail bikini clad woman (Alias, Curse of the Azure Bonds), or a boob heavy miniatures line by producer xyz... Let me also be clear, if you think these issues are comparable or related, your NUTS!</blockquote>

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