There are women only gyms. There are women only conferences. There are women only clubs and groups of women to talk about their experiences and their struggles and their achievement in a lot of industries that don’t have the toxicity that gaming and tech continue to showcase. To think that providing a place for women to talk about issues that might be unique to them is some how in assault on men is just defensive bullshit. Riot Games, MeToo… the rot is still there and the invitation to the table is only a token offer.
Now I don’t think anything coming out of Riot Games is going to be worthwhile because they don’t have even one leg to stand on, but am I surprised that they would fire the employees who are trying to address their problem instead of the ones sending dick pictures to everyone… hah, no. And if you don’t see the reason I think it’s hilarious you would even try to defend that management and their decision to fire and push out anyone who has anything counter to their bros only culture, then I really don’t know what to tell you.
I don’t feel it’s patronizing, but you know what, we tried it their way, the bros let the girls into the club approach and decades later, not really working. It’s time to try something different.
The thread has turned into an example of what happens when generic white guys are permitted to engage in these discussions, and why they shouldn’t be allowed to participate. It’s turned into a circle-jerk of passive aggression, white guilt, bad feelings, and sarcasm.
I mean, I really don’t know what to say anymore when we’re literally talking about Riot Games and some people here think it’s somehow a controversial statement to say that men have all the power and that some women want a place to talk about the industry and their careers without men present.
Like, is this the first time you’ve ever heard of Riot Games? Have you not read about what that company is like and why they’re doing this in the first place?
Not at all (but then, I’m biased - the profile pic is just for a forum game), it’s what happens when regular people are forced to acknowledge and confront something they don’t recognize that is (sometimes) thrust with an aggressive framing they don’t understand. Regardless of the merits of the cause (and there are plenty), there is no change without dialogue.
The fact that there’s plenty of bad faith actors lying about the cause or making false equivalences does not change the power and necessity of civil engagement with everyone about the facts. There’s plenty of us white males who got it, even if we couldn’t possibly understand it.
And, honestly, it looks like identity politics is kind of rubbish and self-defeating - the framing thing again.
Clearly, you are thinking about a certain context, but I’m not sure which one. Does Riot only have one female model that all female characters are based on?
Take a look through this Google Image Search link. You’ll see men who are old and bearded, bald, ugly, huge and strong, slim and muscular, and some really weird stuff. You’ll only see women who are young, busty, with long flowing hair, and almost always showing skin.
Even Overwatch was heavily praised in some circles for including Zarya, but almost all of the other female heroes are in that mold - no female Junkrats or Roadhogs here.
Riot Games is actually known for sexualizing their female characters. They seem to do what a lot of developers do, design both their male characters and female characters for their male players, and no one else. It’s a known problem in the industry. Look at the body types, look at the hair. There’s very little variety.
If you dare ask within one of these communities if there will be any female characters, you’ll be attacked. If you dare ask if maybe they’ll introduce some variety, phew, get ready for that ride. And as soon as you start asking that question, not only will they question why anyone would play an ugly character, as if a variety of bodies suddenly means it’s ugly, they’ll start talking about how you must be ugly which is just the world we live in.
I feel like this is akin to Black Lives Matter. It doesn’t how you approach it. Any term, any question, even meek hi sir do you mind if I say something, will be attacked. There is no term that will be okay, no approach that will be accepted because the people that don’t want to deal with this will refuse to deal with it no matter how it shows up.
Let me stop you right there, you definitely have. I would strongly recommend taking this particular comparison to another thread, I can’t imagine it going unchallenged here.
I understand why you’d make the comparison, I just can’t imagine it not turning into a sprawling argument. I could be wrong, I don’t think you should delete it, but I think if it gets the responses I’m expecting you (or someone) should actively drive that conversation to a new thread in P&R.
Eh, I can’t figure out how to just spoiler it, so I’ll remove it. Some things are too much of a hot button to use as examples and I should know better.
I honestly don’t think that’s true. I think most people just don’t want to deal with someone else’s problems because they have many of their own and everyone’s had to “toughen up” about something. If I hadn’t stumbled on a few threads about the dreadful things women go through, most every single day, (which helped me eventually become aware of other “soft” discrimination and prejudice) I’d probably still be a casual misogynist and a bit racist. You can probably find some of my nonsense on the web somewhere.
The thing is, nearly everyone has colleagues, friends, loved ones and idols who can’t not deal with it frequently and who are hurt often; they care about them and can also care about their issues. I believe equating their temporary lack of empathy with the worst examples neither is or will get society anywhere.
Of course, there’s also sociopaths who just want to gain something out of a fight (a very small minority on any issue, AFAIK), but they are, by definition, good at playing the victim, so you can only lose by fighting them on their terms.
But I’m not the one who has to deal with it, these are only my thoughts on how to educate people similar to me.
This is not a new issue. It’s been going on for decades, literally decades. The asking nicely. The polite requests, the suffering of women in the industry… I don’t know if it is reasonable to ask women to spend a lifetime of dealing with MeToo, sexism in the workplacce, sexism in gaming, their hobby too and still, still asking after years of these kinds of approaches completely failing to try and change the message so it’s sweeter to hear.
Those guys at Riot Games. I do not believe at all, that they would have taken any message, strongly worded or politely suggested or meekly whispered any differently. How do I know that, because the report says that. They labeled women who spoke assertively as too aggressive ambitious. They labeled women who were quiet and they labeled and pushed out the ones in the middle. Hell they wouldn’t even listen to the guys.There is no sort of polite, pleases and thank yous to get men who behave like that to listen because they don’t want. They want their bro culture, and the only way that group is going to change is if someone forces them to. They were already given years of trying to turning it around themselves, and they refused to.
@WhollySchmidt was really directing the “take it outside” to me. Broadly, my argument was that the number of people of all races shot by US police is much, much too large and that turning it into a racial issue made a solution unlikely. I was trying to use it to make a similar argument against identity politics in video games, but WhollySchmidt rightly pointed out that it was much too incendiary a topic to make for a productive discussion. Even this summary is probably unhelpful.
Thanks for the link for the interview with Asad Haider, it was an interesting read and pretty much on the money on several issues that I personally find troubling.
