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| Women In A Macho Man's World | | By Cassie | | January 31, 2001 | Several weeks ago, I was made aware of an article on girl gamers over on Halflife.net, written by Shirow. Since most articles about girl gamers are written by women, I hurried over to take a gander at what a male's point of view might be. Color me oh-so-surprised to find that this article was one of the most back-assward, misogynistic views of women that I've read in a very long time.
Shirow starts off his article on a high note, discussing trash talking on Counterstrike servers. Both males and females participate in talking trash and if you have ever played a multiplayer action game, you have probably witnessed it first-hand. I've done it myself. Who hasn't had their butts handed to them in a basket, only to yell, "I'll get you for that, ya rat bastard" or worse? Exclamations of frustration are to be expected in any game that gets one's adrenaline pumping. Chalk it up to human nature. If you are sensitive and easily offended, male or female, this type of environment isn't really somewhere you should be hanging out. I definitely support the above supposition.
He should have quit while he was ahead.
Unfortunately, Shirow's article quickly deteriorates from there. If I interpret the rest of his message correctly (and it seems I have since everyone else I've talked to who has read the article got the same message), its a macho man's world and if you want to fit in, you'd better do your best to pretend to be a macho man. If you let slip that you aren't, that you're either a woman or a homosexual man, you should not only expect to be harassed but you deserve it for daring to enter the macho man's world.
You see, in Shirow's world, if a woman dares to wear a skirt and blouse, she should expect to be attacked. If she doesn't want to be attacked, she should dress like a man and hide her femininity. If she doesn't, she deserves whatever she gets. I can't help but wonder if he would cling to the same neanderthal ideals if, God forbid, his wife were attacked and molested. Would he blame her for being attacked or would he have a miraculous recovery and become a support to help her through a difficult time? What if it were his daughter? What if he had a son who was a homosexual? I suppose he would deserve to be nailed to a wooden fence in the snow and left to die.
Okay, for the sake of this discussion, lets keep the rest of this about in-game activities. According to Shirow, if you lead your fellow gamers to believe that you are a woman or a homosexual, you should expect to be harassed. Why? Because in his view, most gamers are teenage boys. A couple of points, if I may.
1. According to vast anecdotal evidence obtained over the last few years, the average age of gamers is in the mid-to-late 20s, not in the lower teens.
2. There is a distinct difference between talking trash in a game and harassing someone.
(By the way, Shirow, one more point. The vast majority of people who use a nickname like [36DD]Kitten or anything of that ilk are guys. I know a large number of female gamers and none of us would ever use any nicknames as stupid as that. Whenever you run across a nickname that is blatantly sexual and indicates a woman, you can be pretty sure that the person behind it is the same guy suffering from a flaccid member as the guy who uses HungLo as a nickname.)
Harassment is uncalled for and unacceptable under any circumstance. Male or female. Someone in a game that says, "You just shot me, you bitch!" is trash talking and I can deal with that. Someone threatening to look up my real-life address and rape me with a coke bottle is harassment and is unacceptable. Someone following another person around in a game and talking about gang-raping them, even in a game setting, is harassment and is unacceptable. Stalking someone in a game repeatedly and "fag-bashing" because you suspect they may be a homosexual is harassment and is unacceptable. I could fill pages with examples of harassment that I've either suffered or seen others suffer online.
No one deserves to be harassed, in-game or in real life. Unfortunately, its all too common because of people like Shirow who think its not only acceptable but should be expected.
The bottom line is that people need to stop perpetuating the mistreatment of their fellow gamers by telling the victims that they should expect it and should, therefore, accept it and deal with it. When you see it happen, call the attacker on it and let them know that their behavior is unacceptable. Maybe if enough people started doing that, we wouldn't have to have these discussions.
As cliche as it sounds, its very true in this case: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. |
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