There's been a whole lot of talk lately about how introducing voice chat is going to make life more difficult for gamer girls and I'd specifically like to call out this article in particular:
Editorial: Don't Just Dismiss Concerns of Sexism With Voice Chat
"Being a girl is hard". Well, no. No it's not. I should know; I've been one all my life. Being a human being is hard (I also happen to have been one of these for, like, ever). Whether you were born black, female, red-haired, too short or too tall becomes less relevant because everyone experiences hardships and toxicity both in and out of their gaming sessions. Instead of women once again using this as an excuse to shine the spotlight upon themselves, let's use this as an excuse to shine a spotlight upon toxicity in the gaming experience altogether.
I've been gaming all my life and what I can tell you is this: for every 1 person that finds out you are female and exhibits toxicity towards you, there will be 10 people who shower you in oppressive and unwarranted...kindness. That's right; free loot, an immediate pass to top clans and guilds, undeserved raid slots and mountains of credits and gold. Further, for every 1 of those fanboys or toxic players, there will be 50 who simply don't care one way or another. If you fall in that camp, you're doing it right, and I thank you.
Women are not at all the only ones who will be affected by this. If you've played any other MOBA, you know that a female voice isn't all it takes for toxicity to happen. Without getting into expletives or inappropriateness, let's all just assume we know how toxic players utilize the following comments and themes (this list isn't even all inclusive; just some of the more common ones I hear):
*A person who speaks some Spanish inevitably leads to toxicity related to crime, laziness or border wall security.
*A person who has an accent resembling African American speaking patterns leads to racial slurs.
*A person who has a Middle-Eastern accent evokes toxicity regarding terror and Islamaphobia (regardless of actual religion or beliefs, might I add).
*A very young person is assaulted with caustic terminology because "6 year old shouldn't play this game" (...but seriously, if they are playing, I'm impressed).
*A person with a particularly nasal voice will inevitably receive comments about his mother's basement and lack of female contact.
Oh, and let's not forget the most common and relevant reason to be targeted by woefully overzealous toxicity...bad play. Toxic people are going to be toxic to anyone regardless of gender. Our generation has just taught women (and men) to be oversensitive to women's issues because we were brought up in the aftermath of the (then necessary and relevant) women's movement. So, instead of putting women on a pedestal as though they have the monopoly on frustrating experiences and toxicity in gaming, let's band together to fight toxicity in it's many forms. If you truly want to help make gaming a better experience for women, treat them like anyone else. Don't clean up your language for us, don't give us free stuff, don't shower us with emojis in private messages; just be yourself and let's win the video game together.
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The moral of the story is, treat women like people. Be nice in general. They like that more than braindead white knighting, guys.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists
There seems to be evidence that some trolling maybe 50% is related somewhat to literal mental illness. Combing this with the Dunning
maybe some of the dumbest motherfuckers in human history relative to the amount of material goods/information they sit on,
and then they'll use some of the lamest, brain dead socio-biological, evolutionary psychology garbage arguments to rationalize it.
the best thing is that it's these infantilized boys raging in a - by design - infantilized moba. 20 year old babies raging at Blizzard daycare.
Coddling is also harmful to women. It infantilizes them, and detracts from females which accomplish things on their own merit.
So many times when you're in an arse kicking group, if there's a female they're just there because theyre female, not because they're good. Same with some streamers, they're just a female face uplifted by beta orbiters.
What's so bad about this is when you're a kick-ass female, now there is doubt cast over your skill or accomplishments.
Are you there because of coddling white knights? Are you actually good? Being second guessed like this, or treated with kids gloves because I'm female would infuriate me.
Like Morgan Freeman said about racism: the way we fight it is by not talking about it so much.
The issue is disrespect, period. Whether there are males or females involved, toxicity and disrespect is inappropriate, period.
Disrespect should lead to shame and disappointment regardless of the genders involved.
By people going full white knight zealous defense over females infantilizes them abd in itself is a condescending reaction.
tldr go support Faye :3
Toxicity in general is the problem. If players are bringing their trash wannabe-masculinity to a game we
Yes, it is. Because the narrative you are going against believes that everything is a zero-sum game, which means there will always be oppressors and the oppressed in any interaction between groups.
They will fight against calls to reducing toxicity overall because it takes away resources and time from combatting the toxicity that affects the 'oppressed' and 'gives' it to 'oppressors'. They will attack any attempts to give resources to help those they put into the 'oppressor' box because they control everything and therefore don't have real problems. They will deny any evidence that shows that the oppression/oppressed paradigm isn't true and that there are other factors that lead to a perceived imbalance.
Treating 'Everyone' equally is now controversial. If you look, you can see this.
Re Reddit yeah, well, Reddit takes the toxicity of most things and cranks it up 2-3 more levels.
Re treating everyone equally: well, the current thing is, it's all about "giving back" even if you had nothing to do with the oppression of a group. I don't stand well for that; where I live we've GOT gay rights, and I don't need to stand up politically for em.
Re Zero-sum game: that's the thing. MOBAs _are_ a zero-sum game, and a lot of the online arena games players hang onto are the same. Now consider the large percentage of this group that fall into the NEET demographic (Not in Education Employment or Training) and literally have nothing else in their lives. They're going to internalize that concept.
Guess what? Those people become REALLY TOXIC! We need to do something about that, and that's why I call out that demographic as hard as I can in this community, because maybe 2-3 of them will realize the only thing that will stop them from a death spiral is to GET A LIFE!
I mean... I said it, lol. That post was so over the top I was able to mansplain how he mucked up
No, I was definitely being ironic. I was the only comment on the original post by Trent explaining to him not to talk to/about women like that. And, I thought it would be funny to use the term "mansplain" in reference to telling off another guy about how to be a feminist. I dunno, maybe that's not funny, but it made me chuckle.