As usual, a discussion of bullying which makes no attempt to understand the bullies beyond broad suppositions of demography. Approximately 16 billion words have been written about how bullies are terrible people, etc. etc., yet your condemnations seem to have little effect - what was Einstein's definition of insanity? Try something new.
When you want to harass someone - and let's be honest, you, dear reader, have indeed wanted to harass someone at some point in your life - what do you do? You pick something you believe they will be sensitive to and remind them of it in a mean-spirited way. So, if the bully can tell you're a girl in a male-dominated space, that's what he's going to pick. You may (and problably do) receive this as worse harassment than I receive being called a faggot ("Lol another guy calling me a faggot"), but the bully doesn't need to be a worse person in order to choose to harass you in that way. Both times, it's the exact same guy, and both times, he's just reaching into his insult grab bag. What's he's not doing (necessarily, anyways) by calling you a "stupid slut" is revealing his deep-seated mistrust of women. If you're coming to that conclusion, you're overrating the complexity of the thought process that goes into online harassment. Which is to say, the problem is not what he thinks - it's that he's not.
Would you agree that there's a difference in severity between telling a man "I'm going to come to your house and rape you, you stupid faggot" and telling a woman "I'm going to come to your house and rape you, you stupid whore"? The latter has much more weight, as at least 1 in 5 women in America will be raped in their lifetime. (edit: 1 in 6 is more accurate http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assau...) It's not an unrealistic threat, and it's much more likely to bring up trauma.
Yes I would. But I would disagree that that difference is relevant to understanding the problem. In a nutshell, that was the point of my post. Understanding must come first.
Bullies will find a way to harass people, regardless of gender, is your point? I agree with that. The article is trying to point out that the gaming community is hostile towards women. I don't think your point is all that relevant to the discussion.
I did read your source, I think you miss understood me, I am saying that "sexual harassment" is biased towards women, if you asked a different set of questions that was focused on general harassment you would have a much less biased report, that would show that men are too harassed when playing online games. It would be like asking a group of straight men and homosexual men if they felt they were being harassed for their sexual preferences.
"Findings indicate that, on average, the female voice received three times as many negative comments as the male voice or no voice. In addition, the female voice received more queries and more messages from other gamers than the male voice or no voice."
What did the study find when male voices where played in female dominated online communities? To draw a conclusion dont you need to contrast it with that?
If you wanted to draw a completely different conclusion, sure, but this is talking about how the male-dominated gaming community treats women. It's not talking about how a female-dominated gaming community would treat men.
Anecdotally, the gaming communities that I've been a part of that have had more representation of women have been much more pleasant.
No, it's not, though I will cede that the distinction is a subtle one. My point is that their specific words are not important to them. They're just saying whatever. By the letter of the definition, it is sexual harassment, but by the spirit of their actions, it is not. And if you don't understand why someone is acting the way they are, you stand little chance of persuading them to change their ways. You can stand around and quote rape statistics all you want - it will fall on deaf ears. It has.
First you identify the real problem. The root problem is not that people are harassing women, the true problem is people are harassing people online. You can argue that you think it is worse when women are effected but that distinction does not get us closer to a solution and only serves to drive a wedge between people. Arguments about who is victimized more are useless.
HN won't let me reply to your more recent comment for some reason.
As I see it, you have two options: a) change millions of people to your liking; b) change yourself to your liking. It is not "obviously" true that strangers' words must affect you. If it feels that way, it's because you haven't learned how not to let them. (This is the point the others miss when telling you to just ignore it. The skill is a learned one, not as simple as choosing ketchup vs. mustard, like they make it out to be.)
Let's practice: If they don't care what they're saying, then why do you? Non-rhetorical.
Are you suggesting that this hypothetical situation is much more likely to bring up traumatic emotions, or are you suggesting that more women are actually attacked as a result of online encounters? If the former, then I'm not convinced that other peoples' reactions to things that somebody says (over the Internet, no less) should be that person's responsibility. If the latter, then that's quite the claim, and one without a shred of proof from you.
The former. If you're not convinced other peoples reactions to what you say matter, then try making dead baby jokes in front of someone who's had a miscarriage.
As for the latter, I would suggest instead that more women are driven away from the gaming community because of online encounters. People can say "oh just ignore it" or "grow a thicker skin", but with that reaction eventually you'll have a community of just male gamers who don't mind being told they're going to be raped while playing a game.
And more than that, if I spent the time required to avoid offending people that I talked to, I wouldn't have any time left over to think about anything else. I'm not willing to do that, for more reasons than just that I value my time highly.
> Would you agree that there's a difference in severity between telling a man "I'm going to come to your house and rape you, you stupid faggot" and telling a woman "I'm going to come to your house and rape you, you stupid whore"? The latter has much more weight, as at least 1 in 5 women in America will be raped in their lifetime.
Granting, for the sake of argument, the basic premise that the latter statement would have greater weight if the proportion of women who would be raped in their lifetime was greater than the proportion of men for whom that is true [1], and granting the assertion about the lower bound on the prevalence of rape victimization for women [2], you would need to also provide [3] an upper bound on the prevalence of rape victimization for men that was lower than that lower bound for women for this to work.
[1] Which I would not grant except for the sake of argument, without additional argument for it, because there are a number of problems I see with that premise on its face, but they are secondary to the more glaring problem of the missing comparison.
[2] Which really should be supported by something.
> You're really going to argue that more men are raped than women in America?
No, I'm going to argue that if you choose to make an argument implicitly premised on the different rape victimization by sex, you can't support it with just an unsupported statistic for one sex.
That's a great point, and I completely agree that reported stats are not equal to the actual stats. I would still say that there are more women raped in America than men.
Incidentally, this (even assuming reliable victimization stats that weren't distorted by it) is one of the reasons why I wouldn't assume that the threat was necessarily less serious issued against a male based simply on victimization stats indicating that women were more likely to be victimized.
Not with the sentence lengths and recidivism rates of our justice system. Do you know how hard it is to get a job and stay out of prison with something like a felony on your record?
You're wasting your time. Xboxes has nothing to do with your claim. You made a claim about women being victims of actual rape more often. That is a lie. You got caught lying.
Oookay buddy. I didn't know about the prison statistics. I do now, and I even thanked you for providing the link. It has everything to do with the argument, because we're talking about online harassment, which you can't do or be a victim of if you're in prison.
No. You made a specific claim about women being the victims of rape more often. That got debunked as a lie, and yet you're repeating the claim all over the thread. You can't claim ignorance at this point. You're malicious.
> Not with the sentence lengths and recidivism rates of our justice system.
There's very many more ex-prisoners in the US than prisoners, so that's manifestly false. (As of 2008, about 1.5 million prisoners and 5.5 million ex-prisoners [1].)
Don't believe that link. It's garbage designed to pander to women-hating adolescents — a group that the person you replied to has no problem flaunting his affiliation with.
Being the most raped sex isnt a prize to be coveted, I think he is trying to point out (while immaturely) that the stats quoted by pyrocat where not fair and where heavily biased.
I appreciate your concern, but these people are not capable of bullying me. They cannot get to me. I know their mentality and their tactics inside and out.
Don't believe this poster. She's garbage designed to pander to man-hating female supremacists - a group that the person I just replied to has no problem flaunting her affiliation with.
I am not sure why you think its realistic to take the threat of rape while playing a video game seriously. Do you have any data to back up this claim that it is in fact a serious threat? I am not trying to detract from the message that it is bad but this seems silly.
I'm saying it's more of a realistic threat to women than it is to men. And because of data (http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assau...), when it's a women, the likelyhood that the person hearing the threat has been raped is pretty high.
Asking for people to be banned is against the etiquette, you shouldnt be calling for people who link to bunk websites to be banned as you would both end up banned.
When you want to harass someone - and let's be honest, you, dear reader, have indeed wanted to harass someone at some point in your life - what do you do? You pick something you believe they will be sensitive to and remind them of it in a mean-spirited way. So, if the bully can tell you're a girl in a male-dominated space, that's what he's going to pick. You may (and problably do) receive this as worse harassment than I receive being called a faggot ("Lol another guy calling me a faggot"), but the bully doesn't need to be a worse person in order to choose to harass you in that way. Both times, it's the exact same guy, and both times, he's just reaching into his insult grab bag. What's he's not doing (necessarily, anyways) by calling you a "stupid slut" is revealing his deep-seated mistrust of women. If you're coming to that conclusion, you're overrating the complexity of the thought process that goes into online harassment. Which is to say, the problem is not what he thinks - it's that he's not.
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