Oh, bother.
I've always found the "but it's natural" argument to be ridiculous. If we went full "natural" we'd be eaten by wolves.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Its also unnatural, current archeological evidence suggests that gender roles like we have didn't start until feudalism, and before that things were more egalitarian.... because it turns out that in small communities having all hands that can work working is kind of a boon.
We are SURE monogamy emerged around that time frame, because humans are physically adapted to kinda screw around.... literaly, yet the unaturality of that is never brought up by the same people.
They don't actually care about natural, they just want an excuse.
Edited by Imca on Aug 2nd 2018 at 9:51:02 AM
Oh, bother.
Gender roles in society are about as "natural" as the domesticated dog. It took thousands of years of breeding and training to get those annoying yappy little purse dogs. It similarly took thousands of years to get to the "natural" gender roles these asshats defend.
Edited by M84 on Aug 3rd 2018 at 12:52:45 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
The It's natural argument has so many bad implications its not even funny.
An article was just reasleased on the sexism issue at Riot Games
. The "bro culture" attitude is so stupid and disgusting. A few hightlights:
Among the people we spoke to, three women described being groomed for promotions, and doing jobs above their title and pay grade, until men were suddenly brought in to replace them. Both male and female sources have described seeing unsolicited and unwelcome pictures of male genitalia from bosses or colleagues. One woman saw an e-mail thread about what it would be like to “penetrate her,” in which a colleague added that she’d be a good target to sleep with and not call again. Another said a colleague once informed her, apparently as a compliment, that she was on a list getting passed around by senior leaders detailing who they’d sleep with. Two former employees said they felt pressure to leave after making their concerns about gender discrimination known. One former male employee said that Riot’s “bro culture” is more pronounced behind closed doors, and hurts men too: One of Riot’s male senior leaders regularly grabbed his genitals, the source said, adding, “If he walked into a meeting with no women he’d just fart on someone’s face.”(...)
In her interview at Riot in 2015, one woman was asked to recall her favorite trinket from a 2004 World of Warcraft raid. She had already detailed what games she played and how often she played them. Throughout the hour-long interview, she said, her interviewer had been fact-checking her, looking for holes in the story of her gamer upbringing. “I was trying to prove to this executive that I wasn’t lying about playing games,” she said. To demonstrate she was a real, Riot-style gamer, she recalls wondering in desperation, “Should I just ask this guy to log onto my World of Warcraft profile?” Eventually, she was hired, despite hearing from a confidant later that her interviewer didn’t think she had the “grit” to work there. Another confidant told her that the tone of her interview would have never happened were she a man.(...)
Riot says it doesn’t define “core gamers” as MOBA and first-person shooter players, which several sources with knowledge of Riot’s recruitment practices and who have been interviewed for positions at Riot dispute. One former Riot employee who presented as a woman, for example, has always played role-playing games, and said as much during their 2014 phone interview for a position at Riot not at all adjacent to games development. The interviewer then asked if they played “real games like Call of Duty,” they recalled. “He kept going, kept rephrasing the question, no matter how many times I listed all the things I played,” they said. “In the end, he asked, ‘If someone just met you, how would they know you’re a gamer?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m looking at my TV right now that has 16 game consoles plugged into it.’”(...)
Three months into her time at the company, one former Rioter was feeling frustrated by her manager’s poor performance, she said. She decided to pick up her manager’s slack. (He was later demoted.) Abiding by Riot’s motto, “Stay hungry,” she stepped up to become the team’s de facto leader. She mentored new hires. She led meetings. She updated work processes and led new programs’ rollout. At the same time, she says, she did her own job. She tells Kotaku that a manager said she was slated for the promotion, which a former colleague corroborated. Then, one day, at a party, she says a Riot superior came on to her. When she evaded him, she says, things changed for her at work. Although she was already doing her manager’s job, “a man who probably had three years less experience than me,” ended up getting that promotion. That man was a close friend of the Riot superior who hit on her.
A week after she was told she was an important asset to the team, she said, “I was no longer welcome.” When she sought feedback, nobody could tell her what she did wrong, she says, and those people were similarly in disbelief, which Kotaku corroborated with a former colleague. She was eventually fired, in 2017. “They walked me out like a criminal. They wouldn’t even let me get my bag.” (When asked about this situation, Riot said it would not comment on specific “talent-related cases” but that it was an example of behavior the company “would not tolerate.”)
Tief girl with eartude
That article explains so much.
It also makes you wonder about what's going on with Blizzard (they seem to be trying with Overwatch, but they're falling short).
Then again, Ubisoft seems to have improved things massively in a few years (they've gone from "women characters are too hard to model" to Assassin's Creed: Odyssey), and by all accounts this has come about because of a cultural shift within the studio(s). So there's hope.
TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
The law in the night
Okay, this isn't just toxic masculinity anymore.
This is just plain manchild behaviour, seriously, from the looks of it there is a major grow the fuck up already you dipshit, you are not 12 anymore issue at Riot Games.
Inter arma enim silent leges
It's even worse, reading the tweets from former employees. Here's a handy link from Reddit. And then there are the sexual assault ''and'' rape allegations:
. I’ll tweet proof and edit this. I can’t speak specifics without identifying the victims, who are terrified to come forward due to their abuser’s status, but I can speak for the validity on this as I know the women and am lucky enough to call them my friends. Without giving too much away, I can say one of the victims was a hopeful hire and two others were women who worked closely with me at various times in my two years there. The rapists were all Rioters. One was recently let go and others left years ago, one still in good standing among many other Rioters. Sorry, I can’t provide proof other than that because their safety is more important than anything else.
Edit: Hi Reddit
Edit 2: Clarifying this more. Rape was not a regular occurrence at Riot but it did happen on a few occasions THAT I AM AWARE OF. I realized my wording was garbage and deserved clarity. It was not shocking to me after awhile (hence my wording as “standard”) because the more I started to speak out about my Riot experiences with other women in games, the more they started to open up about being raped at industry parties, being groped in Uber rides with a coworker, or having a colleague shove their hand down their pants and finger them in situations where they couldn’t easily escape. I just started to feel numb to it all.
This happens EVERYWHERE in games. Not just Riot. Women are treated like commodities. One of my last jobs was terrified to hire me because I’d be the first woman on the development team in 5-10 years and they weren’t sure how the men would feel or “what would happen.”
Edited by HottoKenai on Aug 8th 2018 at 11:09:10 PM
Let memes die. Kill them, if you have to.
I'll have to go with M84's signature here. Just, wow.
Don't catch you slippin' now.
Oh, bother.
This shit is exactly why I am so critical of techbro culture.
Edited by M84 on Aug 8th 2018 at 10:56:09 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
I remember reading about that, I too have to echo M84's signature. Techbros are terrible and just generally scummy.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
This makes complete sense when you realize that it's the result of them wanting to hire "hardcore players" as employees. On the surface this makes sense; why NOT recruit high elo players who have a lot of experience to work for you?
The problem is though that the league community is infamously toxic. And it doesn't matter how high you go. A lot of low elo players think that high elo is filled with more dedicated players who are less likely to rage and troll because of their investment into the game, but this has always been false. I've watched high elo streams for years and used to keep up with pro play. A lot of shitty people just take the rating as validation and become self-absorbed primadonnas, throwing hissy fits when things don't go their way. A lot of pro players are the same.
It's only logical that hiring these people with no filter would result in the company being full of manchildren and dudebros who have no respect for anyone and treat women as commodities. The company simply reflects the playerbase they hired from.
I had honestly hoped Riot would be better, not perfect, but not this horrible. But it's not surprising.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Not to mention how few players are women, which I'm guessing has a lot to do with the toxicity. Someone actually put it pretty succinctly on Twitter:
- horribly sexist & abusive in-game culture means 10% of players are female
- only hire people who play our games extensively
- hiring decisions result in horribly sexist & abusive work culture
- results in horribly sexist & abusive in-game culture
Yuuup, there is a reason I wont touch leuge.... if they really did only hire players.... this is less then surprising.
I'm not female but that's also why I've never played it, it's just so toxic that I have no intention of spending my time dealing with that kind of nonsense.
I can't even imagine how bad it is for anyone who's publicly a woman and plays it.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Shin Megami Tensei IV
This is just plain manchild behaviour, seriously, from the looks of it there is a major grow the fuck up already you dipshit, you are not 12 anymore issue at Riot Games.
Bit Toxic mascunity is Manchild behavior like...almost always.
Watch me destroying my country
Yeah that's just toxic masculinity taken to almost unbelievable levels.
I am sadly not at all surprised. Any game these days that puts such an obsessive eye on e-sports and pro competitive gaming tends to get really toxic men that think they are gods gift to humanity.
The Overwatch forums gets women complaining about getting harassed by men via voicechat very regularly and several women I have met that were gamers also mentioned being targets.
It's horrid. I honest to god think e-sports and competitive gaming was an mistake. Everytime I see competitive gaming get shoved into an community the community goes to shit very fast. Overwatch is an very clear example of this.
No, the other one.
While nothing to do with sexism, hiring players is something you should only do sparsely anyway. Well, if your goal is to feedback-loop all well-experienced players and you don't care about getting new players, sure, do that. But experienced players are usually kind of bad at seeing what problems a game has that new players experience, which is also a problem with player retention. You need people with fresh eyes in development. Which, to actually tie it back to the topic, means hiring more female developers makes a lot of financial sense.
Check out my fanfiction!
What’s worse is just how lucrative that approach is. When your only goal is to make money, it makes sense to cater only to the “hard core fans” to milk as much money as possible from them. While this article may hurt Riot’s reputation, unless this affects their bottom line, I doubt the company many will even care.
Edited by HottoKenai on Aug 8th 2018 at 4:10:19 PM
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Hardcore fans of any groups tend to be pretty awful. Not surprising but still bad.
Like. Lore fans of any stuff are usually cool, but Hardcore overall suck.
That's why sometimes take my Dirty Casual medal and leave it there.
I have to admit that I'm not much of MMO fan for it. Albeit, maybe I can get along with the people on the casual levels.
Watch me destroying my country
Hardcore fans are the worst, unless I agree with them then they're reasonable folks.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Only hardcore fans I have ever seen that were nice was Destiny 1, not even 2 only 1.
Beyond that its been absolute trash for the last 15 years that I have been gaming.
To give you an indication of how bad Overwatch OWL's league is.
- There is no women that are OWL members beyond Geguri, who is just one out of dozens of men. There is many women that are good enough to get into OWL but there is barely any women in it, gee I wonder why. If you point this out your bound to get shouted out the room with cries of Geguri made it! and They just aren't good enough!
- OWL at one point employed an player that was an pedophile and a cheater. He was caught sexting atleast 1 underaged minor, if not 2 minors, and he knew their ages too. On top of that he was dating someone whom had an breakdown after hearing the news. If I recall correctly she was told that by him that his shittiness was her fault.
- Several OWL players have made homophobic, sexist, and racist comments at one point or another in their past or present. One was notably kicked out of OWL for this. That guy still gets an fanbase composed of toxic male gamers today.
And thats just one pro e-sports league that I know of. Whom knows how much nasty shit the Rainbow Six league or League of Legends league produces.
Edited by Wispy on Aug 8th 2018 at 2:28:19 AM
Meanwhile, society has been crafted for eons to suit strict cultural gender rules and called it “natural” when not “divine”, and one was often as good as a goner when not following it.
Nobody will force your sons to play with pretty amazon dolls, they will be allowed if they want to, and even if most boys prefer monster truck rugby, those who don’t won’t get in trouble because of it; and nobody will force your daughters play rugby with monster trucks, they will be allowed if they want to, and even if most girls prefer pretty amazon dolls, those who don’t won’t get in trouble because of it. The horror, the horror… It’s The End of the World as We Know It.
Heh, well said.
The hysteria and abuse of the word "social engineering" is extremely annoying, conservatives and reactionaries have engaged in centuries of social engineering to support these cultural norms and yet their modern disciples will whinge about it whenever people want to change society for the better.
It would be hilarious if it weren't so farcical.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 2nd 2018 at 3:04:07 PM
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn