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Era's Woman Problem (Read OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Tbh, I don't really see much difference is this forum than how gaf was pre exodus. Still the same issues with moderation but seeing that place now is a good argument for the strict moderation I guess.
I don't really feel like this forum is very inclusionary of other viewpoints, or a place for open discussion that may lead to educating someone that may hold a questionable viewpoint
I don't really feel like this forum is very inclusionary of other viewpoints, or a place for open discussion that may lead to educating someone that may hold a questionable viewpoint
Is this true for console and pc games though? I was under the impression that the 50/50 ratio only works when you include casual mobile games like candy crush or words with friends. Women dominate the mobile industry while men still heavily dominate the console/PC one, which is the market that this site caters to. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
This site can and should do better on discussing minority/women's/LGBT+ issues. I'm reading the thread and some of these posts are making me smh. Yes, this site is progressive compared with the other options out there but there's still many improvements to be made. Just because hate speech, alt right slime, etc is banned from this forum doesn't necessarily make this place a safe space. Some of the posts i've read give me the "you aren't being appreciative towards the site doing the bare minimum" vibe. Like wtf? The reason these threads are being made is to point out these issues and improve the forum overall. Idk about you but shouting about being progressive instead of actually reading and understanding the discussion at hand doesn't seem very progressive to me.
Console PC is 40/60 f/m or 45/55. Depends on device (DS and wii has more women owners). Mobile adding gives you like 52/48 f/m. This site absolutely is about mobile games as well we have topics about them all the time even if you don't like them
And mine, id also like to add that all this "more bans pls" talk is really upsetting, especially with all thats been happening with the Gunn controversy, and people fixated on define whats an acceptable joke/ type of humour, ect.
I really dont mean to offend anyone, but this my opinion on the matter.
If Era is going to be a large, active gaming hotspot where developers occasionally poke their heads in and discussion moves a mile a minute, then nothing is going to ward off people with jerkass opinions short of somehow making the site invitation-only. You can moderate until you're blue in the face, but they'll keep coming.
This is a decent read - https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/
I mean, games are games, but obviously, genres of titles will be heavily focussed on by gaming devs/marketers based on potential user base sizes and obtainable revenue.
The thread was "why so many men lack empathy?", not "why do ALL men lack empathy?" There's an alarming proportion of men who lack empathy and that I think is worth talking about. The people jumping in to shout "YEAH WELL WHAT ABOUT WOMEN LACKING EMPATHY THO" are too eager running defense that they can't see how those kinds of discussions can actually HELP men recognize those issues, have nuanced discussions, and eventually learn more about themselves.
Of course there's gonna be a very small amount of shitposters going "men r trash lul", but if you look at the proportions of people doing that, vs say the shitposters who pushed MRA shit in that thread, they're not equal in numbers. There's shitposters in every thread so I don't think it's worth getting worked up about that.
Uh, who exactly got to decide which part of gaming this site caters to? Maybe it's somewhere in the TOS or something, but I haven't seen any claims that the focus of this site is on console/PC games. Rather, I'd argue, that is simply a reflection of the demographic on this forum - which is clearly majority male. Even if women ONLY played mobile games... so what? If this forum was majority female posters in that case, we'd be catering to mobile gaming almost exclusively. You don't get to decide what counts as "real games", the natural flow of debate does. The problem is that the natural flow of debate is currently shutting women out of the discussion. That needs to be solved, then we can indeed have a more progressive, inclusive and diverse forum where maybe we don't have people telling us that most women aren't real gamers because they mostly play mobile games. Sheesh.
I don't get it. How is this example upsetting? I was incredibly critical of Gunn in that thread and got what some would call "dog-piled" over my opinions on his jokes and refusing to accept his apology at face value. I was nowhere near getting banned. So again, how is that an example of anything in regards to moderation being over-zealous with bans?
Maybe that just means that the approach of carefully presenting informational links actually isn't all that effective in this context. This isn't a scientific forum that requires citation for every claim, and considering how little rhetorical weight that carries in most people's daily lives, why would you even assume that would get through to people? You're obviously not saying you are, so that's fine - just wanted to provide a counterpoint to your premise.
Shouting people down isn't civil (and I certainly don't debate like that IRL, though I veer into that territory here sometimes), but it's also incredibly dangerous to give a monopoly on that sort of rhetoric to fascists. Some people actually respond positively and are drawn in by aggressive expression - otherwise we wouldn't have politically charged mainstream metal music, not to mention the breakthrough of bands like NWA and Public Enemy. Let's not act like staying on a high horse is the only way to enthuse people. It is a valid way, but certainly not the only or even the most righteous way.
...why do I suddenly feel both like the exact opposite and the perfect example of "old man yelling at cloud"? Fuck me.
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One of the biggest problems is that more levelheaded posters who actually present informational links and can carry on conversations without automatically assuming the worst of the people they're addressing generally get ignored for the quick fix of clowning low hanging fruit. Then they get tired of trying and the only people left discussing topics at all are the reactionaries, willfully ignorant, and superwoke.
Men being relatively lacking in empathy shouldn't even be a controversial topic; we're conditioned from youth not to show emotion other than anger and desire, and not to show weakness. It's no surprise that without people actively combating that social conditioning that many boys become men lacking in empathy. This doesn't mean all men are devoid of empathy.
Men being relatively lacking in empathy shouldn't even be a controversial topic; we're conditioned from youth not to show emotion other than anger and desire, and not to show weakness. It's no surprise that without people actively combating that social conditioning that many boys become men lacking in empathy. This doesn't mean all men are devoid of empathy.
Maybe its just me, but everytime there is a LoL thread, and some skimpy design\skin is released: it seems like everyone is trying to defend it when it gets some criticism.
I mean I think LoL is a fun and well made MOBA, but you are kidding yourself if you think a significant percentage of the female roster is not over-sexualised inappropriately. You have some respectable base skins like fiora, but then she gets a bikini, and sexy teacher fetish skin. I am not saying that no character, male or female should be sexually overt, but it feels kind of creepy when its every character and it doesn't fit the personalty of the voice, base-skin or backstory of the character.
I don't mean to offend anyone personally, but I kind of thought this had to be said somewhere.
I mean I think LoL is a fun and well made MOBA, but you are kidding yourself if you think a significant percentage of the female roster is not over-sexualised inappropriately. You have some respectable base skins like fiora, but then she gets a bikini, and sexy teacher fetish skin. I am not saying that no character, male or female should be sexually overt, but it feels kind of creepy when its every character and it doesn't fit the personalty of the voice, base-skin or backstory of the character.
I don't mean to offend anyone personally, but I kind of thought this had to be said somewhere.
I think stricter moderation is the only solution. You can't control who joins a forum, but you can control who gets to stay. I'm a big fan of the transparency of the moderation here, and if that's retained I don't see a problem with banning people more often.
You can argue that it's unkind to ban someone without giving them plenty of opportunities to change, but those opportunities come at the expense of marginalised folk. Swing that banhammer!
As for avoiding an echo chamber, it's avoided by letting marginalised people speak, and listening to them. I've heard bigots and conservatives speak a billion times and I've concluded that they're wrong and unworthy of my time. Fuck 'em all into the sea.
You can argue that it's unkind to ban someone without giving them plenty of opportunities to change, but those opportunities come at the expense of marginalised folk. Swing that banhammer!
As for avoiding an echo chamber, it's avoided by letting marginalised people speak, and listening to them. I've heard bigots and conservatives speak a billion times and I've concluded that they're wrong and unworthy of my time. Fuck 'em all into the sea.
Yes, I suppose I should have mentioned some views are well beyond what should be acceptable in modern society but I usually find people that express such views are dealt with swiftly.
Then again, I'm a lot more tolerant to seeing such views expressed than I suppose I should be.
While I consider myself progressive, I don't see why everybody on here has to prescribe to that. This is ultimately a gaming forum with an active off topic forum. Not everybody has to be progressive nor should they feel pressured to be. As long as everybody is respectful and discourse is never rude of hurtful I don't see the problem
I myself had been victim of moderation warnings that under my impression were not applicable. Nevertheless it helped to make an accurate wording of my opinions. That's ok.
But, a lot of people who want to "have an opinion" and "to be heard" are people who want to discuss a point of view who should not be acceptable in any rational society. There should't be a counter point to bigotry of any form, regardless on how you express it. Normally moderation here is very good in catching this and it was exceptionally good in doing in the pre-Exodus GAF and what other proof do you need that when all the "leftist douche bags" moved over here the hate discourse just exploded on that site while tolerated by management.
Thanks. I must be missing them then because the vast vast majority of threads and communities I see on gaming side are for console/PC games although I will admit that I frequent off topic much more than gamingERA.
Also not saying that the gaming community as a whole is not toxic as hell to women who want to join it I was just proposing another factor that may have something to do with the low number of women on here.
Yeah man. We have a long-standing thread about sexualization in video games created by the OP of this thread. What started out as a debate about what sorts of tropes are problematic and what the industry can and should do better going forward based on examples and input from women within our community quickly got derailed into men bringing up a million and one examples of "yeah but THIS character isn't sexualized (even if it was clearly sexist in other ways) though!" follow by a million and one posts explaining why it was still problematic and suddenly that's the only thing we're talking about in that thread instead of listening to women. Again. Every fucking time.
It's just so tiring even for me... and I'm a fucking man FFS.
Thanks, completely agree. There's dozens of us! t_t
Clearly we were the fascists all along! What an Echo Chamber™ this place has become. *goes to another thread to argue against a thousand awful but perfectly welcome and acceptable posts*
That was more or less what the thread was about and there were a large number of men coming in trying to defend it as "not a big deal to them", as if the rest of us didn't already know that they don't give a shit about how women are treated in terms of language.
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I think it's good as is. We need to allow some room for discussion and this thread is a good example of that.
we pretty much went full circle day 1. Era has been very close to GAF just before the migration
though I haven't seen any mass bans yet, bans seem quite a bit less arbitrary here, and the warning system is a big improvement imo
please note that this isn't meant to be a dig against Era. The choice is either strict moderation or everything goes. I do believe Era is a pretty inclusive and welcoming place for a forum this size. Less sure about the gaming side, since I don't go there much
I stayed out of the "females" threads, dunno what happened there. In my native language and a whole bunch of other languages, that term is exclusively applied to animals
Yeah the ratios basically fall into what I thought; that women are much more into puzzle games on phones than the type of games you would find on consoles.
I just make this point because I imagine the amount of women who usually play these puzzle games casually and the amount of women who would post on a forum dedicated to video games wouldn't cross over very much which could account for the massive gap between men and women on here.
I mean if we're going to go along with reinforcing gender stereotypes like this, I would make the claim that women are MUCH more prone to seeking out others who share their interests and connecting with these people online via forums. It's almost like there's this invisible factor that is actively gatekeeping them away from their stereotypically natural inclination to connect with others... aaah I can't quite put my finger on what it could be... dammit!
As a lurker I will say that the amount of people on here I've seen mistakingly refer to themselves as Liberals is frustrating.
Which is really my point. It's a system made by people. Its failable. If I dont post something because I thknk I might get a ban it's not necessarily because there is (or at least in my opinion) something wildy gross about the statement but rather its just not somethung worth treading that line. Or it's rude. Like if someone just is being a racist or some shit I can't say "shut the fuck up you garbage human being" even if that is what I want to say.
There is a lot of disingenous people making that statement I agree. But you framed the initial argument so wide I couldn't really agree with it.
Like I said, I have never caught a ban. Forums are a privilege and so I believe in following the rules. Not everything I want to say that I flatout cant is ill intentioned.
i really dont know what are you talking about, or what example you think im using, or what does it have to do with anything the fact that you were nowhere near being banned, what i meant was that there a some people right now asking for bans, and some people hellbent on determine what humor is ok and what is not, among other things, and they tend to be the same people.
Thats what i find upsetting.
Do we have a problem in the way certain things are done the forum?, yeah,.
Do i accept that i need to be exposed to the opinions of those that feel oppressed and also be educated by them in some matters?, hell yeah.
But askings for bans its not the way.
Sorry if i cant make myself anymore clear, english is not my main language.
Jesus man no need to be so aggressive. I never made the point that phone games aren't real games or look down on the women who play them.
I was stating that because it can give us one of the reasons why this site is so heavily dominated by men. Like I saw in another post, women are the dominant market when it comes to puzzle games which are predominantly found on phones. I would argue that the average women playing candy crush or tetris on their phone during breaks, bus rides etc. Would not be the type of person who would wanna sign up for a site dedicated to gaming. That's all I was trying to say.
I don't necessarily agree with everything you've written here, but I agree with your general conceit that there must be enough good faith among posters for us to disagree with each others' reasoning without that getting conflated with disputing the other party's humanity / legitimacy / standing.
I agree. Though I've disagreed with some moderator actions here and there, overall I think the mods have done a good job of balancing their approach to different viewpoints.
I'm not just referring to mods, though. There are a lot of legitimate, non-bigoted viewpoints that regularly trigger dog piles and shitposts, with users assuming the worst about each others' intentions. Religion is a pretty good example that's been mentioned in this thread.
I am too (in some contexts), but I recognize that ERA isn't the site for that, and I appreciate the community that we've forged by enforcing some limits on bigotry and the such.
Generalisations do not make a great starting point for genuine discourse, and that whole thread was based on anecdote. It's lke encountering some lazy millennialand concluding that millennials are lazy. All of us on this forum tend to point out how silly such generalisations are when those articles pop ups - so why is the same flawed argument allowed for males?
Ok that's fair, I must have misunderstood your initial post. Apologies.
Meh, consider my aggression directed to how that argument is often used to imply those exact things. If you aren't making that point, then I apologize but still want to take an aggressive stance against that idea by using your claims as a starting point, if that's OK. I know I'm being incredibly sarcastic on these issues in general but man, it's frustrating feeling like we're all stuck on the god damn starting line and being kept there constantly by drive-by shit posters who are doing everything in their power to avoid relating to the issues leading to women feeling less than welcome on our forum.
I think citing these points rather than engaging with the idea that men are actively gatekeeping women out of our community comes across as incredibly dismissive and honestly potentially insulting toward the people facing this type of discrimination constantly here. If you're going to make the point that women are less inclined to participate in forums like these, you can't just not acknowledge the elephant in the room this very thread is about. Again, maybe the reason women who play Candy Crush aren't on these forums isn't that they don't want to talk about Candy Crush with other women, maybe the reason is that men are actively bullying them off the platform. Once we've solved that problem, then we can have a genuine debate about demographics and their gaming preferences on our forum. Until then, I honestly don't know what point you're trying to make unless you agree with what I wrote here, at which point I think you should have made that clearer in your initial post.
Again, apologies if I come across overly vitriolic, but there is a context of the bad faith version of your argument being used to imply that women somehow aren't "real gamers" and that it's their own damn fault for whatever fucking reason.
Once more; it's a chicken/egg dilemma. Obviously none of the people surveyed would express any willingness to participate on ERA, but the interesting question is why - and even then I would argue that the people surveyed would rather dismiss the question as ridiculous rather than give a detailed explanation of how social structures shape gender norms, which obviously is a factor in how this all turns out for different people.
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I'm not sure man. If you wanna take a survey about how many of these women would join a site like ERA please go ahead. I would be very interested to see the results. In my experience though the women that only play causally on their phone are not interested in gaming culture at all as it's more a thing to pass time then an active hobby.
Once again very willing to be proved wrong if provided with evidence
Slow down, champ.
I simply said this site is progressive. When you compare it to the vast majority of forums out there that have become alt-right infested cesspools, it very well fucking is.
Nowhere did I neglect the plight of the women on this site. I don't know where that bullshit came from.
Unless you're the type to create the worst conclusions about someone you don't agree with to try to make an effective argument against them.
In any case, I did say that there are members who aren't progressive. And anyone who says something sexist gets banned asap.
So, like I said, this site is progressive.
the problem is that the principle "As long as everybody is respectful and discourse is never rude or hurtful" is predicated on progressive beliefs about the equality of racial, gender, and sexual minorities
The Henry Cavill thread was like a venus fly trap for mods to catch misogynists. Ban after ban after ban and people kept coming in there with their defenses of Cavill that basically were just thinly veiled statements saying that women are liars.
How you frame the thread is pretty important to the start of a discussion. Do you not think a thread title like
"Why does a lack of empathy seem more common among men"
would have lead to a better discussion? It comes of less accusatory and generalizing and instead is a question/observation that better invites discussion.
Seriously. Personal religious faith isn't political in all instances, only when it intersects with public policy. Cutting taxes is policy and no one has been banned over advocating for policy.
Human rights aren t policy and are not political, even though in the us we ve been programmed to lump them in. You can t argue for dehumanization, it isn't legitimate public policy and that's worthy of a ban.
One guy came back from his ban to start shit again and got permabanned. I don't think any of them learned anything.
I honestly don't think it would have mattered. If you look at the angry responses in that thread or this one you can see the very concept is offensive to those men.
Everyone's definition of respectful is different. Everyone's definition of rude is different. Everyone hurts in different ways.
I would venture to say even alt-right idiots have certain things that they consider rude or hurtful, it's just really not in line with liberal standards, and a lot of it is disingenuous victimhood; the alt-right loves co-opting the language of civil rights movements to aggrandize their own, usually self inflicted, problems.
Mostly, you have to ask yourself, "is this person speaking in good faith, are they trying to understand or are they fishing for anger/pity?". The flaw comes in thinking it's the left's duty to "cure" every single alt right person. It is not. That is an unreasonable demand. It's hard enough getting centrists and apathetic moderates to vote. You can't expect lay people coming to a forum to relax (like anyone else) and take a break from real life to play personal therapist and counselor to each and every alt-right idiot that comes along.
I would venture to say even alt-right idiots have certain things that they consider rude or hurtful, it's just really not in line with liberal standards, and a lot of it is disingenuous victimhood; the alt-right loves co-opting the language of civil rights movements to aggrandize their own, usually self inflicted, problems.
Mostly, you have to ask yourself, "is this person speaking in good faith, are they trying to understand or are they fishing for anger/pity?". The flaw comes in thinking it's the left's duty to "cure" every single alt right person. It is not. That is an unreasonable demand. It's hard enough getting centrists and apathetic moderates to vote. You can't expect lay people coming to a forum to relax (like anyone else) and take a break from real life to play personal therapist and counselor to each and every alt-right idiot that comes along.
I feel like in regard to threads like the "female" one or other cited examples, the mods are active in actioning trash posts, but the issue is that there always seem to be trash posts in threads like those and it prevents the discussions from feeling productive. Since this forum is already so male dominated it's pretty unfortunate to hear that people feel pushed out as some people have mentioned in this thread. I'm not sure what the solution is, or how to push posters towards being more empathetic towards other users. And yeah, the empathy point brought up in the OP shouldn't be controversial at all.
I understand why the rules against posting cross-board receipts exist, but if someone is visibly participating in doxxing offsite, they really shouldn't be welcome here. Kiwi Farms and Voat especially. Responding to this as it was brought up earlier in the thread.
Edit: and yeah, some of the aggressive opposition to the OP pretty much drive the point home.
I understand why the rules against posting cross-board receipts exist, but if someone is visibly participating in doxxing offsite, they really shouldn't be welcome here. Kiwi Farms and Voat especially. Responding to this as it was brought up earlier in the thread.
Edit: and yeah, some of the aggressive opposition to the OP pretty much drive the point home.
As is very concisely laid out in the OP, it's not progressive enough. Just saying Era comparatively progressive is meaningless and absolute bullshit.
The fact that there's 23 pages of people arguing about the point OP makes is just validating that fucking point.
The title really wouldn't have mattered. I encourage topic starters to give us something that can start a legitimate conversation but there are some topics where the discourse is just headed in a certain direction by bringing it up. That topic is one of them.
The other thing to consider is that there is nothing natural about those ratios. Gaming in general was a much more evenly split thing back before the 80s crash, and the post-crash marketing of games began to portray games as a male-gendered activity.
What you're describing is the second order effect of sexism in games, not a defense of why the gender splits in this forum aren't a result of sexism.
I don't think we need more bans, but we need longer ones.
A 2 or 3 day ban should be a week, and what we ban for a week ought to be a month.
A 2 or 3 day ban should be a week, and what we ban for a week ought to be a month.
I see people mention the page numbers, just a note if anyone reading this wasn't already aware: you can increase the posts-per-page count if you'd like, so that there are 100 posts rather than 50 on a page.
You make a fair point but that's a problem that's well beyond ERA and one this website can't solve. The gaming industry is definately becoming better about it but it's still got a long way to go.
Do you think that if BLM was named 'Black Lives Matter too along with every other single life', racists wouldn't have found something else to be pedant about to deflect away from the discussion?
I was saying that your initial two posts indeed refused to acknowledge the point I was making in reply to you. That comes across as incredibly dismissive in a thread like this. Dropping your hot take that this place is progressive when women are literally telling you why they disagree is a pretty bad look. Now, I called you out on it and you clarified your stance - great! I think that you should have been clearer from the get-go as a sign of respect and solidarity for the people dealing with these issues on a daily basis, but aside from that I have no beef with you.
I also didn't assume anything outside of the context of what you posted. I don't care what your personal opinions and feeling are if you're not actually expressing them in your posts. I don't know you and it wasn't a personal attack, it was an attack on your post.
I don't think we should be sugarcoating these issues when the facts are often quite brutal, no. Men aren't babies and should stop being treated as such.
I disagree with this assertion. Rather, I'd claim that ERA is possibly (note: not certainly) the ONLY contemporary gaming forum with the reach and credibility to have any positive impact on these issues whatsoever. Obviously the Gamergate movement forced companies that genuinely believe in equality (like EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft et. al) to take a stance and that has a bigger impact than anything we can do here, but let's not undersell the influence debates on here have. If no one from the gaming community speaks out on issues about human rights, it sure as hell won't solve itself. ERA is the only platform of it's size currently that actively encourages those debates and allows them to reach a wider audience (no disrespect to Waypoint of course, much love).
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