Support NeoGAF

[TharpDaddy]

People should be able to have a place they feel comfortable and can express their opinions without fear. If the forum is not offering her that, be it due to lack of moderation, type of community, etc. then she should be able to set up a private gender-restricted community if she so desires. If she is not feeling that the Star Citizen forum fulfills what she is looking for, then what is wrong with her looking for a way to fix that? It's not like she's harming others to do it. Ideally the Star Citizen community would be one where all people of all types are able to talk and share their opinions without worry, leading to a much higher quality of discussion and getting the perspective of everyone. The gaming community becoming more diversified and accepting of others would only lead to good things. We are definitely not at that point, though. It really sucks that something that we do for fun becomes negative for a lot of people due to what they have to put up with.

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

It's worse now because women are being more vocal than ever about how they feel about the game industry, which seems to threaten a normal sect of gamers, but on top of that, the MRA movement is also picking up considerable steam, which amplifies things further. And for NeoGAF in particular, just due to its sheer size, it's becoming increasingly representative of society at large. People are less afraid to say what they really think on the internet, and they are also challenged to amplify their views amongst the already-extreme voices in order to be heard. The result is really, really awful. As moderators, we do our best to stamp out the worst offenders, but there is always going to be this group of people who just have crappy views but don't cross the line into banworthy territory. And that group gets larger as NeoGAF gets larger. Fortunately, we have great members who are willing to patiently engage many of these people and show them a different perspective. Not every hateful voice is actually hateful. Sometimes it's just ignorant.

But I love this place, and it is by far the most friendly place for minority groups I've ever been to on the internet, and I do my best to keep it that way.

I suppose I might as well chip my pocket lint into the ring.
I don't understand why there was such a backlash on the SC forums, by the mods themselves, cause it seemed people who opposed the idea still encouraged the OP to make the club(I think at least intially, going to double-check).
I still oppose the idea in its theory, and would love to engage people on the debate of introducing intolerent to tolerant and providing a safe community. Which NG does. I dunno why, but I'm guessing it is cause of the insane acceptance process ,background checks and voice interview seems like it could go against the trans- community (Dunno whether its sexual or gendered) and exclutivity. I mean if it is a safe environment for girls, girl-friendly, open to people who may be more comfortable talking with other women (perhaps even cross-dressers may be more excepted), and closly modded would yield the exact same result.
Whether or not I personally disagree or agree with this, I feel that the process could be biased against some groups mentioned above perhaps, so why not do what this forum does via the above soluton?
Being in a minority, I feel that NG is way more accepting and it is way more improved than others. And I feel that this is way more improvement than before. Discussion is always welcome here so . Its so late for me, I've went on enough, so I should probably stop typing.
Edit: O man akira we had the same idea lol. Great minds think alike I suppose?

 

[Authority]

No solution for this type of problem is perfect so your point is mostly useless to everyone. That said, the safe zone is a realistic and proactive strategy that works in the real world.

Explain to me what is the issue. The real issue.

If your view is that warped to believe that

• The gaming community is sexist.
• Star Citizen Community is sexist and accepts rape culture.
• It is sexist to have a thread about having space-bikinis implemented as part of a greater customization in a game.
  Male population is sexist.
  Male population is a threat to female population.

then obviously there is nothing more to discuss.

Like I said, she is biased and the way she identified and approached the issue is provocative, flawed just like her idea.

Everything would have been fine if she stated that she would like to have a common space for women to gather around and talk their own stuff and have fun instead of calling out for measures to tackle the lack of a safe zone for women gamers.

Got it. I feel like I should point out that, similarly, if the public or the common man were to read your posts in this thread, they might feel that you had a hidden motive in making them, in particular in dancing around the issue by attributing your criticisms to some nebulous public rather than actually saying whatever it is you mean.

I mean, I'm not saying you do have some hidden motive in your posts. Of course I wouldn't say that. I'm just saying that, you know, the common man might think so.

SF members aka Goons have got a reputation and it is up to them to discredit that reputation or reinforce it. She did not handle the issue well at all, her wording of the matter was disastrous and her follow up attempts aka blog-post blew everything out of proportion.

There is a difference stating there is sexism in gaming community and the gaming community is sexist.

 

[Messofanego]

I dunno why, but I'm guessing it is cause of the insane acceptance process ,background checks and voice interview seems like it could go against the trans- community (Dunno whether its sexual or gendered) and exclutivity. I mean if it is a safe environment for girls, girl-friendly, open to people who may be more comfortable talking with other women (perhaps even cross-dressers may be more excepted), and closly modded would yield the exact same result.
Whether or not I personally disagree or agree with this, I feel that the process could be biased against some groups mentioned above perhaps, so why not do what this forum does via the above soluton?

This was covered a while ago, but maybe because it wasn't in the OP, some might have missed it:

Second page: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35305811/RSI/brownsea2.png

Howard Crane asks this:
"How do you handle females in males bodies and transwomen and transman in general? Thank you for your answers and good luck."

Lauresh:
"Transwomen would be welcome of course, transmen as they identify as male would be encouraged to participate in the public areas."

 

[moolamb]

Well that was handled decently well. Thumbs up.

 

[Authority]

Edit: Wouldn't let me quote myself correctly.

Resummarize
Let us take a closer look.

Lauresh

• Female gamer
• Member of Something Awful
• Self-classified as a Goon

Past and Present

She had fond memories of gaming back in the 90's -
She does not have many fond memories since the 90's -

Gaming Views

• The gaming community is sexist. Not a small minority, not a small part of it, but all of of it -
  
• Star Citizen's community is not only sexist but also accepts rape culture -
  
• Star Citizen's community is sexist because not only there was a thread that was locked about having Sex in Space -

  Sex in Space«12» but also because a part of the community would like to have more customization access by -

Why we need a Female Star Citizen Community or FSCC

• Some females not willing -
• Some females requiring -
• Two wrongs do not have to flip a coin to see who is right or less right.
  
• To the common man and taking into account all information; not just whether that particular community should exist or not, this is another publicity stun to promote Goon Culture and stir up shit. To the common man the moderator(s) should be immediately taken down and that is not negotiable.

Now more to the point,

Countering her argument

• There is a difference between thread exclusivity; related content to the OP accessible to everybody, and a community exclusivity; related content to the OP accessible to only by that particular group.
  
• The fact that she is a a member of Something Awful and a Goon in that respect, is enough to question her true intentions. That is the premise of mistrust from the Star Citizen community. Her intentions are questionable. In that respect again, if no one knew that information there would be no suspicion.
  
• There is no reason for special treatment or special access in a forum - We should all have access to all the content. There is nothing to hide.
  
• The official forum serves the public and not the majority or the minority - The public.

In summary

Her position is that most, if not all, gamers are males with misogynistic views that accept rape culture. The way she writes only reinforces that; remember "not willing to talk with their male counterparts" and "safe place".

So there real question is this,

• Does a person like that with those views deserve the right to hold her own exclusive community? Absolutely yes. She has every right to want to belong or belong to any group she wants to.
  
• Does the public, in this sense the gaming community of Star Citizen, have the right to humiliate her because she is a SF member and a Goon and/or a female gamer? Absolutely not.

Until proven otherwise the public should respect her view on this matter. However, there is no smoke without fire; that blog post reinforces the idea that her intentions were not genuine or innocent but based on a social and political agenda.

RSI Response

• Questioning her true intentions confirmed -

  obviously, a group from the Something Awful forums are using this as an opportunity to troll the forums. As always, this is extremely tedious. The user in question is also part of the Something Awful group, which made the moderator dealing with the issue believe the entire thread was a setup. This would not be the first time SA Goons have created an issue.
  
  However, on review and in spite of the sheer volume of concerned Goons coming out of the woodwork on this, I do not believe the thread was necessarily a setup and that several mistakes were made in terms of moderation.

• Disputing the allegation(s) that her ban was wrong or sexist confirmed -

  I am 100% confident that it was because of the 30+ flags complaining about other users in the thread, with profane messages attached: “fucking ban this retard,” “for the love of god would someone please stop this person from shitting up the thread already,” “mother fucking trolling” and so on. Lauresh seems to have flagged not only sexist posts (which should be warned/probated) but also anything complaining that the thread was a setup (‘you’re a Goon, you just want to fight, etc.&#8217

• Dealing with the moderator(s) accordingly confirmed -

  I believe that our moderator made the following mistakes:
  
  - Lauresh should have been given a 24-hour cooling probation instead of a 7-day probation. Bans here function on a strike system for each infraction: a warning, then a 24-hour probation, then 7-day, then a month and then a review for permaban. While Lauresh had been banned before (and warned several times before that,) their previous ban was overturned and should not have counted as a strike. This probation should have been for abuse of the flag function and nothing else. Her ban should have been better explained at the time.
  
  - The thread should not have been closed. While moderators are empowered to close toxic threads and this one was unquestionably toxic, I will advise against doing so for “important” topics such as this one.

  
  

  In the meantime, I am hereby instructing William, our lead moderator, to do the following:
  
  - Return the ‘Female Gamers Group’ thread to the forums. The thread should be heavily moderated to remove sexist comments and ban users who make them. Let us try to have a serious conversation here.
  
  - Unban Lauresh with a single strike (24 hours) rather than two (7 days.)
  
  - Remove the moderator who banned her from the active roster pending further review. As I said above, I am confident that Lauresh was not banned because she is a woman, but I will not feel comfortable until we review all of this moderators’ recent actions.

Case closed.

 

[EdibleKnife]

Explain to me what is the issue. The real issue.

The woman in question saw enough derailed topics and topics with a sexist theme to them that she believed the only way to have a stable, uninterrupted discussion with her fellow female gamers was to have a topic where they could bring up topics without fear of sexism or male trolls in general. Is the entire community a cesspool of misogynists? No. Probably not. But there was enough of it and enough of it was going unchecked that she felt as though these steps were necessary. You say "Everything would have been fine if..." But this isn't really about what would have been fine for the forum as a whole, but what would have made the female gamers on the board feel like they could speak freely. Everything truly would have been fine if the moderators took more steps to make sure that people within the community weren't as unfriendly to the opposite sex. Now, she made this voluntary. If no one showed interest or if the moderators thought it might function better as a public group, things would be different. Except for the fact that, even in this innocuous topic, everything was absolutely bogged down by attacks and dismissals of the woman in question and the idea as a whole. That right there is part of the very issue she was bringing up. Even if this were some elaborate Something Awful troll, it would seem that it was pretty successful in bringing that issue to light.

Also a side note: To the people proposing that the women build a whole new forum from the ground up to avoid this; what actually sounds better? The female gamers remaining members of the Star Citizen boards, able to still comment on topics on the main boards but able to still have a place they could seclude themselves for uninterrupted discussion? Or a massive exodus of a majority of female gamers from the Star Citizen boards where the moderators couldn't even make them feel like they could communicate safely?

 

[seatwave]

There's still no female avatar in the Hangar module to match the default male one which was released last August. The male avatar even managed to get a change of clothing implemented and yet no word at all on the female version.

Hopefully Cloud Imperium Games will address the issues easily seen in their community as I've seen some pretty bizarre forum moderation over there.

 

[RpgN]

Edit: Wouldn't let me quote myself correctly.

Resummarize
Let us take a closer look.

Lauresh

• Female gamer
• Member of Something Awful
• Self-classified as a Goon

Past and Present

She had fond memories of gaming back in the 90's -
She does not have many fond memories since the 90's -

Gaming Views

• The gaming community is sexist. Not a small minority, not a small part of it, but all of of it -
  
• Star Citizen's community is not only sexist but also accepts rape culture -
  
• Star Citizen's community is sexist because not only there was a thread that was locked about having Sex in Space -
  
  RSI Response
  
  • Questioning her true intentions confirmed -
    
  • Disputing the allegation(s) that her ban was wrong or sexist confirmed -
    
  • Dealing with the moderator(s) accordingly confirmed -
    
    
    Case closed.

• • 
    
    What an extremely one sided take on the situation, if I ever saw one.

 

[notworksafe]

It's kinda weird reading people's view on Goons as being 4chan type trolls.

While sometimes obsessive, cynical, and rejective, they're one of the more socially conscious nerd communities out there. Even the lowliest of Goons may ostracize you if you come across as MRA-y in anyway.

Remember that this is the community that got reddit to take down all their pedophile subreddits.

I don't believe it was a troll cause goons are too stupid and humorless to be trolls anymore. Maybe 10 years ago when SA was relevant and funny.

I don't know if I'd call them socially conscious either. They had a convicted pedophile moderating one of the forums for years and were loath to remove him after it was revealed.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

Why can't we just let them rock?

We're guys. We have all the advantages. Why do we have to be able to read/write to every single forum?

This whole debate reminds me of the one about black history month.

 

[Jado]

Explain to me what is the issue. The real issue.

If your view is that warped to believe that

• The gaming community is sexist.
• Star Citizen Community is sexist and accepts rape culture.
• It is sexist to have a thread about having space-bikinis implemented as part of a greater customization in a game.
  Male population is sexist.
  Male population is a threat to female population.

then obviously there is nothing more to discuss.

Like I said, she is biased and the way she identified and approached the issue is provocative, flawed just like her idea.

There is a difference stating there is sexism in gaming community and the gaming community is sexist.

It's already been explained a number of times that stating "the gaming community is sexist" is not meant to be an accusation against every single person in a gaming community. Indeed, what is there to discuss if you insist on mincing words and making a basic error in mis- or over-interpreting her words? Lauresh does not literally think that every guy over there is anti-women; just that there is a generally sexist pall on the forums which is a very reasonable observation. You've been staring at her posts too long looking for hidden ill will against men and come up with some very dumb and flimsy conclusions about her and her intentions.

Everything would have been fine if she stated that she would like to have a common space for women to gather around and talk their own stuff and have fun instead of calling out for measures to tackle the lack of a safe zone for women gamers.

She did both of these. Your problem, as Marcel and others have previously stated about similar posts to this one, is that she wasn't polite enough nor jumped through enough hoops to personally appease you. You're not ready to listen until she's a good little girl that doesn't personally offend you or hurt your feelings. It kinda touches on the concern troll thing: you're duplicitous. Pretending to be attentive and open-minded to discourse, but really just bent on disagreeing no matter what her tone or language. You're part of the problem and the reason these safe spaces are needed.

Your "case closed" summary is really pathetic and transparent.

 

[Kinyou]

Why can't we just let them rock?

We're guys. We have all the advantages. Why do we have to be able to read/write to every single forum?

This whole debate reminds me of the one about black history month.

But black history month is inclusionary, isn't it? Everyone can partake

What bugs people is that the proposed girls only group would be exclusionary within the forums community

 

[Marcel]

What an extremely one sided take on the situation, if I ever saw one.

It's clearly a goon conspiracy and not a severe case of confirmation bias at all.

 

[APF]

We're guys. We have all the advantages. Why do we have to be able to read/write to every single forum?

BECAUSE PRINCIPLES! If we give an inch then it's no longer equality*!!


*Equality meaning perpetuation of the status quo.

 

[Odrion]

I don't believe it was a troll cause goons are too stupid and humorless to be trolls anymore. Maybe 10 years ago when SA was relevant and funny.

I don't know if I'd call them socially conscious either. They had a convicted pedophile moderating one of the forums for years and were loath to remove him after it was revealed.

"loath to remove him"? He was immediately removed when revealed and the community was happy to shit on him.

But they are pretty humorless these days.

 

[Marcel]

I don't have a Something Awful account but I have a friend on that forum that I reached out to and he pulled some text from the thread about this whole 'goon conspiracy' bullshit. It seems as if the developers themselves are positing and encouraging this whole flimsy theory to distract people from the real problem of their shitty forum.

Here's what I got. This is apparently a conversation between a backer and Ben Lesnick:

Me: Hello, are you available to talk?

Ben: Sure, what's up?

Me: That was incredibly unprofessional of you to explicitely call out Lauresh's comments like that. It was uncalled for.

Ben: That's pretty weak.

Me: You represent CIG as a whole. You are the leader of this community, the individual responsible for shaping and driving it. And today you used that position to shame and humiliate someone when it was completely unnecessary.

Ben: You guys used to be better at this. You're grasping.

Me: You don't understand Ben. I'm telling you the truth. This isn't me trolling, or putting on an act. You genuinely hurt someone as a function of your position, and the fact that you can't see this is incredibly disconcerting.

Ben: Flag text is in no way confidential. We wouldn't let moderators see confidential account information, as they're volunteers.

Me: There's a difference between an expectation of privacy, and having CIG's official representative to the community publicly read your dirty laundry out to a community of 500,000 people.

Ben: So you think we should have a less open moderation process? (Hey, rules lawyering.)

Me: This has nothing to do with CIG moderation policy. This is about you, and what you wrote. I think you should take responsibility for what you said, and apologize to Lauresh for calling her out.

Ben: I'm probably not going to do that, though. Better luck next time, you really fell apart today.

Me: I'm disappointed in you. I meant what I said when I looked you in the eye at PAX and said I appreciated the effort you were making. I've been completely honest and open with you, and you still think this is some kind of joke.

(At this point Ben disconnected)

The backer seems to want accountability on the part of Lesnick and his forum administration, while the immature grudge holding and passive-aggressiveness from Lesnick comes out in spades. It's a real shame they're trying to muddle the message by crying conspiracy and setup.

 

[Odrion]

Well, that definitely makes his apology seem extremely insincere!

 

[Marcel]

Well, that definitely makes his apology seem extremely insincere!

Absolutely. It also paints a troubling picture of employees of the developer trying to distract from serious issues by encouraging childish inter-forum rivalry. What a clusterfuck.

 

[The Technomancer]

You know, I've heard the "more games should add rape because realism" thing in other contexts before. It always seems like such a ridiculous notion. People are more than willing to sacrifice realism when realism is icky, boring, or otherwise interferes with fun. No one playing Donkey Kong wants him to have to pick the shit out of his asshair. No one wants their game of Civilization to end in an hour because real people don't live from the stone age to the modern era. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who want rape in their video games don't really care whether it's realistic or not.

"realism" is just the other side of the "it makes sense in a fantasy world" coin when it comes to these kind of things, just people attempting to ignore the fact that games are deliberate constructions.

 

[Orayn]

"realism" is just the other side of the "it makes sense in a fantasy world" coin when it comes to these kind of things, just people attempting to ignore the fact that games are deliberate constructions.

Yeah, this nonsense reminds me of the people who insist on adding more sexism to something like D&D, a game that is generally tailored to egalitarian heroic and high fantasy.

The people who do stuff like that don't really want to construct a whole world with its own history, culture, and power structures like, say, The Witcher, because that takes real effort and thought. They're just looking for a vaguely appropriate excuse to justify and implement their own prejudices.

"Why aren't there more female protagonists in shooters?"

"Because there aren't that many women shooting guns and doing action stuff in real life, duh. It's realistic" says the person ignoring the fact that real life is also rather lacking in Michael Bay supersoldiers with regenerating health.

 

[The Technomancer]

Like I said, she is biased and the way she identified and approached the issue is provocative, flawed just like her idea.

Everything would have been fine if she stated that she would like to have a common space for women to gather around and talk their own stuff and have fun instead of calling out for measures to tackle the lack of a safe zone for women gamers.


SF members aka Goons have got a reputation and it is up to them to discredit that reputation or reinforce it. She did not handle the issue well at all, her wording of the matter was disastrous and her follow up attempts aka blog-post blew everything out of proportion.

The question for me is: why did she feel she had to do the latter? What compelled her to be so stringent in her "women only zone"? I'm trying to read this thread now and figure out what's been said.

 

[pants]

Goons had a bad rap from EVE before they even came to SC. Most people believe their guild motto is basically permission to troll.

I know several Goons IRL and they are good guys, but I have yet to find one that shies away from the behavior that got them their trolling rep. On top of that, many people in the SC forums believe they are linked to all sorts of scams and infamous figures, which I don't think they are guilty of (Baragoon), but the rep sticks.

If the original poster wants respect she should know to post without here guild being so blatantly advertised. If she doesn't know the reputation her own guild has, I have very little sympathy for her. It is very obvious to me why she was met with hostility and the whole thing sounded creepy given the context.

.

I'll probably be quoted 1000 times but I'd be very, very wary of taking any goon at face value. A reputation well deserved.

 

[Kinyou]

I don't have a Something Awful account but I have a friend on that forum that I reached out to and he pulled some text from the thread about this whole 'goon conspiracy' bullshit. It seems as if the developers themselves are positing and encouraging this whole flimsy theory to distract people from the real problem of their shitty forum.

Here's what I got. This is apparently a conversation between a backer and Ben Lesnick:



The backer seems to want accountability on the part of Lesnick and his forum administration, while the immature grudge holding and passive-aggressiveness from Lesnick comes out in spades. It's a real shame they're trying to muddle the message by crying conspiracy and setup.

What exactly did Ben do? seems like I missed something

 

[Marcel]

What exactly did Ben do? seems like I missed something

In addition to being insincere about his apology, Ben is making snide comments like "Better luck next time, you really fell apart today" referencing that somehow this was a failed trap set by the Something Awful members, which is not based in any sort of reality and distracts from the actual problem of their sexist community and forum. People like doomed1 distract and dilute discussion here about a real problem of sexism by trying to posit bullshit theories about conspiracies that are encouraged by the community manager of Star Citizen's developer.

 

[Briarios]

I would like to point out something that should be self-evident, but it is clear throughout this thread that it is not:

You can be sexist and not know you're sexist.

Claiming people aren't sexist, that the gaming community doesn't have sexist tendencies, while displaying sexist tendencies doesn't really support the point that sexism is overblown.

It's so massively entwined within the culture, that people are just generally blind to it. Then, when someone justifiably points it out, people get all defensive. When do people usually get overly defensive? When they're guilty. That's another part of privilege, as well ... Not having to recognize that you have it.

Regardless of that, it looks like the SC forums & the company are righting themselves and everything will be better for it. Good on them.

 

[Kinyou]

In addition to being insincere about his apology, Ben is making snide comments like "Better luck next time, you really fell apart today" referencing that somehow this was a failed trap set by the Something Awful members, which is not based in any sort of reality and distracts from the actual problem of their sexist community and forum. People like doomed1 distract and dilute discussion here about a real problem of sexism by trying to posit bullshit theories about conspiracies that are encouraged by the community manager of Star Citizen's developer.

Ah ok, obviously not really how a moderator should behave, though this line had me thinking that it's something bigger

Ben: Flag text is in no way confidential. We wouldn't let moderators see confidential account information, as they're volunteers.

Me: There's a difference between an expectation of privacy, and having CIG's official representative to the community publicly read your dirty laundry out to a community of 500,000 people.

Like revealing private posts or something like that?

 

[Marcel]

This line had me thinking that it's something bigger

Like revealing private posts or something like that?

I don't know too much about that because I'm not close to that end of the situation. Moderation policies on their forum or TOS or whatever. The backer is entitled to his or her opinion on how it was handled (badly).

Unlike the marks claiming conspiracy, I actually showed some cards.

 

[androvsky]

This line had me thinking that it's something bigger

Like revealing private posts or something like that?

I think he's talking about posting the text of the flags she sent the mods, which is in the post linked in the op.

 

[Authority]

The woman in question saw enough derailed topics and topics with a sexist theme to them that she believed the only way to have a stable, uninterrupted discussion with her fellow female gamers was to have a topic where they could bring up topics without fear of sexism or male trolls in general.

Can you give me a number? What is enough? Links? Where is the solid evidence?

Because apart from,

Star Citizen has it's fair share of sexist remarks including a thread asking for rape

from two threads that were locked, and I repeat locked nothing else is provided. Do you view a forum racist because two racist threads were created and locked?

but what would have made the female gamers on the board feel like they could speak freely.

That female gamer that holds the view that the gaming community is sexist, Star Citizen Community is sexist and accepts rape culture, male gamers are a threat to female gamers, got the Green Light regardless of calling "everybody out"; aka all the parties involved, as sexists.

That female gamer with extreme left-wing views got the support.

Except for the fact that, even in this innocuous topic, everything was absolutely bogged down by attacks and dismissals of the woman in question and the idea as a whole.

If I create a thread I am responsible for what I write and what I write and to who I write it to. And criticism is part of it.

Unless you are stating that Star Citizen Community is sexist or supports a sexist environment in which there is no evidence to support that. Unless you stating that the male gaming population is responsible or held into account because some male gamers are sexists.

Is she wanted a debate on the matter of sexism and how RSI plans to address the issue on forum and in-game there are better ways to do so.

Is she wanted a group for female gamers only like I said she should have worded it different and not start with

After a conversation today I realised that there's not really a place for the females in Star Citizen to hang out and talk about random stuff in a safe environment so I'm starting one.

and continue with a tasteless and baseless blog-post.

No rational male gamer is offended that some female gamers would like to have their own group. They are offended that some female gamers feel threatened by the male gaming population.

Generalizing a gender population or a community as sexist is sexist itself.

What an extremely one sided take on the situation, if I ever saw one.

Because RpgN said so.

It's already been explained a number of times that stating "the gaming community is sexist" is not meant to be an accusation against every single person in a gaming community. Lauresh does not literally think that every guy over there is anti-women; just that there is a generally sexist pall on the forums which is a very reasonable observation.

My reading comprehension is fine, in fact it is perfectly fine.

"Gaming community is sexist".
"White male community is sexist".
"Male community is sexist".
"Female gaming community is bad at games".

And it has been already explained why absolute statements that generalize to that extend a gender, a population and a community is stupid.

And again there is no evidence to support that Star Citizen's threads are generally sexist. So no evidence to support that "general" pattern or that "consistency" and no evidence to support that "reasonable observation". It is a poor attempt to stigmatize an entire game community with no social or political agenda and has no class.

Pretending to be attentive and open-minded to discourse, but really just bent on disagreeing no matter what her tone or language. You're part of the problem and the reason these safe spaces are needed.

I do not have these distorted views that the gaming male community is misogynist or the gaming female community is misandrist. Those views are shared by the MRM and the likes.

Unfortunately, the person that you defend does.

Your "case closed" summary is really pathetic and transparent.

Case is closed because all actions have been taking into consideration and all parties have or will be treated accordingly.

Have you got evidence to suggest otherwise?

 

[Palette Swap]

.

I'll probably be quoted 1000 times but I'd be very, very wary of taking any goon at face value. A reputation well deserved.

You write that like there aren't probably tons of GAF members who also happen to be SA members. Do you have a goon detector to avoid taking what they write on GAF at face value?

 

[Marcel]

Saying "case closed" to an issue like this is some imperious nonsense but I guess someone who is oblivious to their own confirmation bias would feel that way.

 

[epmode]

You write that like there aren't probably tons of GAF members who also happen to be SA members. Do you have a goon detector to avoid taking what they write on GAF at face value?

I like SA, myself. SA-GCCX is doing god's work.

But I'm used to seeing people dismiss the entire forum outright so this thread is no surprise.

 

[Phades]

This seems like dejavu to me. I can't recall which MMORPG prior to Star Citizen (SC isn't an mmorpg though...), but there was another one where a very similar event went down where there was a call to require a seperate female section to be created from the developers/publishing company. It wasn't met with hostility, but the response basically was to create their own forum or guild and shut down rather promptly without it blowing up like this incident apparently.

At the time it seemed odd to me, since there wasn't even forum sections divided off for individual guilds at the time either. It was only by topic. A year or so after that those forums were mostly closed down and relegated to only tech/account support style issues. I didn't live on the forums so I'm not sure if it was due to downward slide of posts or whatever making it more trouble than it was worth or not though.

 

[APF]

I guess I'm failing to understand what is so horrible about acknowledging the gaming community (or society at large) has serious issues with sexism?

 

[Marcel]

I guess I'm failing to understand what is so horrible about acknowledging the gaming community (or society at large) has serious issues with sexism?

There's nothing horrible about it. People who feel they aren't responsible, not involved, or feel it's not a problem get extremely defensive and obtuse and negatively contribute to an already volatile environment.

And in the cases where there is someone who is actually harboring entrenched sexist views (or hiding them beneath pedantry etc.), they don't always like a mirror being held up to them because they won't like what they see.

 

[Irobot82]

Isn't one of the teams on TNGS named after Japanese panty fetish? Shimapan? Which I hear you shouldn't google? The dude videos clearly show anime characters (who look underage) in panty shots. So yeah......sexism isn't rampant in gaming.

Edit: His logo is a heart with a panty on it. Which looks like an upside down butt.

 

[KKRT00]

In addition to being insincere about his apology, Ben is making snide comments like "Better luck next time, you really fell apart today" referencing that somehow this was a failed trap set by the Something Awful members, which is not based in any sort of reality and distracts from the actual problem of their sexist community and forum. People like doomed1 distract and dilute discussion here about a real problem of sexism by trying to posit bullshit theories about conspiracies that are encouraged by the community manager of Star Citizen's developer.

I'm really keen to believe in conspiracy after all the stuff i've experienced in EVE Online from Goons.

Trolling, spamming and being loud were their domain in EVE. When many corporations and alliances had strict policy about trolling other people or even write on local chat during OPS, Goons were completely different. Basically any time You've encountered Goons in a system, You had to turn off local chat completely.

And what is wrong with Ben's post? He showed why user was banned and what she did in the past.

 

[runnin_blue]

There's nothing horrible about it. People who feel they aren't responsible, not involved, or feel it's not a problem get extremely defensive and obtuse and negatively contribute to an already volatile environment.

No offense, but I've been following the thread and you have been defensive the entire time and consistently shooting down people who don't agree with your point of view.

A bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

The world is a diverse place and people will always have differing opinions, you need to accept that.

I am not condoning sexism but freedom of speech.

 

[Marcel]

I'm really keen to believe about conspiracy after all the stuff i've experienced in EVE Online from Goons.

Trolling, spamming and being loud were their domain in EVE. When many corporations and alliances had strict policy about trolling other people or even write on local chat during OPS, Goons were completely different. Basically any time You've encountered Goons in the system, You had to turn off local chat completely.

And what is wrong with Ben's post? He showed why user was banned and what she did in the past. What is wrong with that?

So, confirmation bias here as well then. Axe to grind against a message board population rather than worry about greater issues of sexism in the community.

Gotcha.

 

[KKRT00]

So, confirmation bias here as well then. Axe to grind against a message board population rather than worry about greater issues of sexism in the community.

Gotcha.

Do You think that devs are not against sexism? If You dont, whats the problem?
People are awful on the internet and ultra awful on game community boards. I just ignore them, You should too.

 

[Marcel]

No offense, but I've been following the thread and you have been defensive the entire time and consistently shooting down people who don't agree with your point of view.

A bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

The world is a diverse place and people will always have differing opinions, you need to accept that.

I am not condoning sexism but freedom of speech.

People are free to share their opinions and I'm free to disagree and call out false equivalencies, misunderstandings about safe zones and apologies for ignorant sexist bullshit. I encourage you to use the ignore feature of this forum if you're tired of seeing me but I'm not going to shut up.

 

[runnin_blue]

People are free to share their opinions and I'm free to disagree and call out false equivalencies, misunderstandings about safe zones and apologies for ignorant sexist bullshit. I encourage you to use the ignore feature of this forum if you're tired of seeing me but I'm not going to shut up.

I find it funny because I got banned for doing a very similar thing to what you are doing, which was sticking up for what I believe in when I was being attacked in a thread.

But somehow I think the mods are going to give you a wide berth lol.

Your comments don't bother me, I was just pointing out the obvious.

Edit: btw if people are free to express their opinions like you say, then I don't understand why you are basically telling them to shut up.

Does not compute lol

 

[inm8num2]

Eurogamer posted an article about the situation up to now.

 

[EdibleKnife]

Can you give me a number? What is enough? Links? Where is the solid evidence?

Enough to feel uncomfortable/unsafe is all it should take. If one person can handle 20 threads before they feel uncomfortable, that's fine. If a person can only handle a few, that's also fine.

Do you view a forum racist because two racist threads were created and locked?

Me personally? It would depend on the content of those threads and not simply the fact they were locked. If there was a racist thread on GAF where a majority of the posts were all in support of racism, making racist jokes, etc. I would definitely see GAF in a different light.

That female gamer that holds the view that the gaming community is sexist, Star Citizen Community is sexist and accepts rape culture, male gamers are a threat to female gamers, got the Green Light regardless of calling "everybody out"; aka all the parties involved, as sexists.

That female gamer with extreme left-wing views got the support.

I say she holds that view because despite attempting for a reasonable bit of consideration for a private board, she was mostly ridiculed, hated on and banned from the boards by the people in charge of them. If I was at a university that had a student group in full support of white supremacy where none of the administration addressed this issue and yet expelled me, I would be extremely critical of that university's community.

If I create a thread I am responsible for what I write and what I write and to who I write it to. And criticism is part of it.

Unless you are stating that Star Citizen Community is sexist or supports a sexist environment in which there is no evidence to support that. Unless you stating that the male gaming population is responsible or held into account because some male gamers are sexists.

Is she wanted a debate on the matter of sexism and how RSI plans to address the issue on forum and in-game there are better ways to do so.

There's criticism that is actually helpful. And there's criticism that does nothing but hold up conversation, divert attention away from real issues and derail topics. She seemed to receive a hefty amount of the latter rather than the former. I also don't understand why you get hung up on the semantics of her posts about a sexist community. Not every male on the forum needs to be a staunch men's rights activist for her to feel that way. What makes her feel that way is that she is on a forum where the membership of people who are sexist is rarely challenged by the very people in charge of keeping the peace. Worse, people with those views have almost free reign to create and support topics in line with their view but stifle women and men who might feel uncomfortable or outright put off by those topics.

Is she wanted a group for female gamers only like I said she should have worded it different and not start with

and continue with a tasteless and baseless blog-post.

No rational male gamer is offended that some female gamers would like to have their own group. They are offended that some female gamers feel threatened by the male gaming population.

Generalizing a gender population or a community as sexist is sexist itself.

Stop with the "what she should have done" stuff. You are not her. Period. She was the one in the position where she felt uncomfortable and did what she thought was necessary. The people on the board as well as yourself are blowing out a single sentence as some sort of insult to all male kind. Obviously they didn't feel horrid enough that they disabled their membership. They felt uncomfortable enough though that they believed that a private area was the best way for some uninterrupted discourse. If people actually felt like her words were too harsh, there was a better way to bring it up: Talk to her in the topic and ask her about what made her uncomfortable or feel as though this topic was necessary and take those steps to make the forum a better place rather than wholly and completely shutting her down.

 

[AnotherDustInTheWind]

Authority is one of the reasons why women feel threatened on forums. Who would want to participate to such bull-headedness? You are more worried about being right than to actually listen and see the bigger problem.

"Status quo, status quo, status quo!"

 

[unbias]

So, confirmation bias here as well then. Axe to grind against a message board population rather than worry about greater issues of sexism in the community.

Gotcha.

Unless you are a frequent board member over there, all people have to go by is a very small sample of posts. So its hard to understand how much sexism is actually on the board. That said, the issue isnt specifically about just sexism as much as it is peoples right to assemble into an exclusive group on a public forum. I dont see many people here saying that sexism doesnt exist or that sexism isnt an important issue. That said, if a group of people known for being divisive pops up, not everyone is going to have the same proprity as you. Wanting to focus on the perception of sexism on a forum, with very few samples(in this topic) vs as many gamers hatred or strong disfavor for a group of people that they continually have to deal with is just going to have more to it then sexism, because goon is very disliked.

The issue of being able to have segregated forums in and of itself isnt an issue of sexism but an issue of should they have the ability to do so. I think the idea that you cant create any group you want to be very silly, that however doesn't mean that particular discussion is one of sexism. What you are advocating is increasing more protections for women to not be in a position to be a victim of sexism as much, which is fair, but not the same thing. Also, it seems like there are 3 points and conversations being made here: 1st one about the womens right to create a group that they are advocating for on the forums, 2nd how much sexism is actually present on the forums, and 3rd Goon's history and overall dislike by alot of the community. Seems you want to quash all discussion until everyone is talking about the 1 particular thing you want, and then turning them all on your side. doesnt seem very productive...

 

[Marcel]

Authority is one of the reasons why women feel threatened on forums. Who would want to participate to such bull-headedness? You are more worried about being right than to actually listen and see the bigger problem.

"Status quo, status quo, status quo!"

"If I frame the issue this way with mile-long arrogant dissections about what I thought she was thinking, then it's not a big deal. Case closed."

 

[runnin_blue]

Unless you are a frequent board member over there, all people have to go by is a very small sample of posts. So its hard to understand how much sexism is actually on the board. That said, the issue isnt specifically about just sexism as much as it is peoples right to assemble into an exclusive group on a public forum. I dont see many people here saying that sexism doesnt exist or that sexism isnt an important issue. That said, if a group of people known for being divisive pops up, not everyone is going to have the same proprity as you. Wanting to focus on the perception of sexism on a forum, with very few samples(in this topic) vs as many gamers hatred or strong disfavor for a group of people that they continually have to deal with is just going to have more to it then sexism, because goon is very disliked.

The issue of being able to have segregated forums in and of itself isnt an issue of sexism but an issue of should they have the ability to do so. I think the idea that you cant create any group you want to be very silly, that however doesn't mean that particular discussion is one of sexism. What you are advocating is increasing more protections for women to not be in a position to be a victim of sexism as much, which is fair, but not the same thing. Also, it seems like there are 3 points and conversations being made here: 1st one about the womens right to create a group that they are advocating for on the forums, 2nd how much sexism is actually present on the forums, and 3rd Goon's history and overall dislike by alot of the community. Seems you want to quash all discussion until everyone is talking about the 1 particular thing you want, and then turning them all on your side. doesnt seem very productive...

Well said.

 

[Buzzman]

I am not condoning sexism but freedom of speech.

I find it funny because I got banned for doing a very similar thing to what you are doing, which was sticking up for what I believe in when I was being attacked in a thread.

But somehow I think the mods are going to give you a wide berth lol.

Your comments don't bother me, I was just pointing out the obvious.

Edit: btw if people are free to express their opinions like you say, then I don't understand why you are basically telling them to shut up.
Does not compute lol

I don't quite understand your point here, is it Marcel's fault you were banned?
Also in case you didn't know, freedom of speech means jack-shit on forums.