Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.
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Some attitudes are so vile that they deserve to be nuked from orbit.
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@Insomnia I get what you're saying, I really do... it sucks that there are some chicks out there claiming to be 'gamers' that are really just capitalizing on their "assets" instead of displaying any real gaming. But at the same time... that does not make it their fault that Random Guy decides that since This Chick is a bikini girl gamer, ALL girls are bikini girl gamers. That is Random Guy's fault for being a douche.
Simply put... the blame should always go to the harasser for being harassing, never to the prior harassed party (no, not even if they didn't stop it). Appropriate behavior is subjective and differs from person to person. What you might see as harassment, another might see as harmless flirtation and vice versa.
EXAMPLE:
Jane is a stripper. She gets paid to take her clothes off. She smiles her way through a lot of terrible and demeaning comments each shift because it makes her more money. Even if she doesn't like it, she puts up with it because she wants that extra cash.Sarah is a ballerina. She sometimes wears semi-revealing costumes for her job, but her dancing does not include her removing clothing. She receives applause and roses for a job well done.
Bob frequents both strip clubs and the ballet, since both allow him to watch scantily clad women dance around a stage. While Bob catcalls Jane and Jane puts up with it to get that extra ten dollars from Bob, it is NOT Jane's fault if Bob turns around and starts catcalling Sarah at the ballet. BOB is the one choosing to behave inappropriately, despite the fact that both women have a passingly similar job (ie. dancing in scanty/tight-fitting costumes for money).
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And if you're wrong? You look at the ashes and shrug and walk away?
I realize this is a contentious and difficult as fuck topic, but realize that its been going on for decades in the feminist academic circles, and THEY haven't come to a decision either. So your righteous fury ... is yours to have. There is no consensus.
So I'd say either being willing to explain carefully, and without attacking a person nor reducing their words to hyperbole, OR pointing to articles that sanely attempt the same, would be far more productive.
Or you can be angry and destructive.
Currently the recent thread is deceased. No minds were changed, no compelling thoughts were shared.
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On the VR harassment, the creators of the specific game were horrified, and created a shield bubble power, where I gather if someone else is inside it, you just don't see them anymore once its activated. (I gather that in theory you may want to play in close proximity, back to back slaying the undead or something, so this fade out isn't automatic.)
I am glad they tried to do something, but I wonder at the effectiveness. But maybe my effectiveness hinges too much on getting people to stop this behavior, and not at least providing relief for the targets.
Opinions on this attempted fix? In has MU* equivalents in @gagging, as well as word swapping (as mentioned before hug --> greet), etc.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Insomnia said in Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.:
But gaming is the work, and they just don't do it.
No. Entertainment is the work. Gaming is the medium for it. In game streaming you can entertain by being good at the game, entertain by being bad at the game but funny about it, or, apparently, by being dead sexy and playing the game.
In the end it is, however, the customer who decides what "service" it is they're willing to pay for (in dollars or in time spent with eyeballs on screen--whatever the currency).
It just makes it harder for women who just want to be gamers. Or... women online really. I'm not knocking sexuality, I'm knocking the women who use that sexuality because all it does is make it okay for other people to treat other women like that.
"I'm not knocking sexuality. I'm just knocking sexuality that doesn't go the way I want it to. And I'll try to elevate this into a 'sisterhood' thing so that it isn't obvious what's going on."
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Assuming any given set of actions has at least one context where it is acceptable or better, who is responsible for making sure those contexts are clear? Who should be teaching these limiters? Is every human innately capable of walking these lines for everyone?
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@Misadventure said in Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.:
And if you're wrong? You look at the ashes and shrug and walk away?
I'm not wrong.
If a person harasses somebody, it is not some other person's fault. Just because I let somebody touch me does not make me responsible for that person touching someone else WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT. Period. I don't give a fuck if "feminist academic circles" debate the topic. They're stupid if they're actually debating this, too.
I realize this is a contentious and difficult as fuck topic, but realize that its been going on for decades in the feminist academic circles, and THEY haven't come to a decision either. So your righteous fury ... is yours to have. There is no consensus.
And?
So I'd say either being willing to explain carefully, and without attacking a person nor reducing their words to hyperbole, OR pointing to articles that sanely attempt the same, would be far more productive.
So? I do not owe you shit. I don't owe you shit when you PM me, and I don't owe you shit when you call me out on threads after you've said that you don't want to engage with me any more. I have absolutely no obligation to not be offensive in response to someone else being offensive, and she was being offensive. I don't actually need lessons in how to communicate with people.
Or you can be angry and destructive.
Or, you know, I can just be blunt and forthright and not bother candy coating shit just to avoid offending your delicate sensibilities.
Currently the recent thread is deceased. No minds were changed, no compelling thoughts were shared.
Did you not read @Ganymede's posts? Or @surreality's? Or @roz's? Or how about any of the others that were much more thoughtful than my own? Reasons were given. Information was shared. I said that I hoped that she felt bad. That's just awful, isn't it?
Asking if she blames sex workers for people being raped is a valid question within the context of her posts. Is it uncomfortable? Absolutely. Does that invalidate it? Nope. It's illustrating what she's saying in a much more obvious, much more black and white way.
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I really don't think it is much of a stretch to expect that people ask before making sexual or physical contact with someone. Do you really need someone to say don't touch my tits to you every time you meet someone with tits in order to not do it? If you fuck someone on the first date does it give you the expectation that you will fuck everyone on your first date even if they did not give indications they wanted to, and kosher to blame it on "well I went on a date once and we fucked, so I just assumed I got to do that with everyone?" Gimme a break.
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On the VR harassment, the creators of the specific game were horrified, and created a shield bubble power, where I gather if someone else is inside it, you just don't see them anymore once its activated. (I gather that in theory you may want to play in close proximity, back to back slaying the undead or something, so this fade out isn't automatic.)
I am glad they tried to do something, but I wonder at the effectiveness. But maybe my effectiveness hinges too much on getting people to stop this behavior, and not at least providing relief for the targets.
Opinions on this attempted fix? In has MU* equivalents in @gagging, as well as word swapping (as mentioned before hug --> greet), etc.
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Is there a note of the invisible thing elsewhere? The article just mentions that when the 'personal bubble' is activated, other players must stay one foot or more away.
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I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure Huh! That's... odd. The space barrier seems more sensible, but I can see how that'd work. Not as well, I don't think, but I at least see what they were going for.
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@Insomnia
Lets take sex out of it, lets say I borrow $100 from a friend they do not make me pay it back.
Next time I borrow money, another $100 from a different friend, the second one gets pissed because i don't pay them back, I some how doubt me going Hey Person a didn't make me pay them back will result in the second creditor blaming the first.
In both cases the fault would be mine for not paying back debts just that in one I got away with it. -
While I usually play men, I occasionally play women.
The first time I did was an eye-opener, though. An asexual warrior with the focus meant to be on that aspect, with her just happening to be a woman. The shit that consistently ended up directed at me, without an ounce of solicitation, was horrifying. It certainly informed how I page people, because I don't want to be that person.
I kept going: Why, WHY would anyone think this was OK to page me?!
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@Insomnia said in Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.:
I guess I'm a misogynist then? I've been on the "Why not, other person did" end of things far too often to otherwise. I'm not being sexually harassed because I'm a girl, I'm being sexually harassed because another woman is encouraging the behavior by using her sexuality. How is that not a problem?
I wouldn't use the term "misogynist," but I would consider your logic profoundly misogynistic.
You're not being sexually harassed because you're a girl. And you're not being sexually harassed because another woman uses her sexuality to get attention or sell products.
You're being sexually harassed because some asshole thinks it's okay to sexually harass you.
Without regard to legality, suppose a woman agrees to have sex with a man for $400, and does so. If that man goes home to his girlfriend and fucks her without her consent, the man is the rapist -- not the hooker. I don't think there's any argument there.
I can understand the idea of "one bad apple spoils the whole bunch." And I understand the sentiment that "floozies on the Internet bring us all down." But let's be very clear here: floozies on the Internet brings us all down because there's a large population of wretched, God-forsaken assholes out there that will make any flimsy connection that seems remotely plausible in order to denigrate a group that they want to subjugate.
They are awful people, and they deserve our ire; the people exercising their freedom to use their tits to sell video games do not.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede said in Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.:
You're being sexually harassed because some asshole thinks it's okay to sexually harass you.
This.
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I've recently seen a situation I don't quite know how to deal with.
On the game in question, the policy is don't be a jerk, if you think someone is a jerk tell them to stop jerking at you, if they don't, Staff will come down on them.
Staff is very willing to come down on anyone being a jerk per this policy.
Now, someone put in a request indicating someone made them uncomfortable. I look at it and reasonably say: yeah, I get that. It was sexual and uninvited and weird. I totally agree with the target calling it unpleasant.
But someone's response was to ignore the situation.
And ignore it more when more things that made them uncomfortable happened. More pages, more comments, ignore. Ignore was how the someone expressed 'no' in this situation.
The policy, as stated, says: if someone bugs you, you say NO, and if they don't take that NO, we flatten their asses.
But this someone's responses were to ignore: to not have a response at all.
I honestly don't know how to deal with this.
On the one hand, I recognize that what is 'comfortable' or not ... varies. And people can be unintentionally bad, so they should have some say.
On the other, I completely agree this character has a totally valid reason to be uncomfortable.
On the other-other hand, this seems like a classic case of harassment and women not speaking up, and I totally don't want to pressure onto that situation more of an issue.
Yet on the other-other-other-hand, holding someone accountable for actions that aren't following the rules seems unfair in a way I'm not comfortable being.
And I have so many other hands.
But one is: the policy we wrote down says: say stop, and if they don't stop, Staff will absolutely bring fire and brimstone down on them. But if you don't say stop, but are uncomfortable, ... what do we DO?
I honestly don't know what's the ethical response in this situation.
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This is the danger of having too many guidelines in your policy.
If you see someone doing something wrong, even without a direct complete, drop the fucking hammer on them. End of story. If they whine that it's not in the policy, point out that the overarching policy is "don't be a jerk" and that staff doesn't actually need a complaint if they observe someone being a jerk.
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@WTFE said in Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.:
This is the danger of having too many guidelines in your policy.
If you see someone doing something wrong, even without a direct complete, drop the fucking hammer on them. End of story. If they whine that it's not in the policy, point out that the overarching policy is "don't be a jerk" and that staff doesn't actually need a complaint if they observe someone being a jerk.
I don't disagree with any point you have here-- in fact I agree with most-- there is a segment of Staff who think rules are important, and that Staff acting in a way that are arbitrary and not in adherence to stated policies is bad. I think this view is not-invalid, though I am inclined to lean otherwise.
I think Player A should be protected.
I think Player B crossed a line. BUT.
I don't think that line violated any of our rules as stated, and those rules aren't nitpicky lawyer-level details, ether.
I don't know quite how to resolve these two situations.
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@ixokai If you're really not comfortable flattening the creeper for the observed behavior, since he hasn't been told to stop by the person he's creeping on:
p creeper=We've received reports of unwanted sexual advances from you to another player. She was not comfortable addressing this directly with you, but we have received and reviewed her complaint. This behavior stops now. If it persists, you will be shown the door without ceremony.
It is far from a perfect answer, but it is better than being able to do nothing at all, if you're not comfortable just canning the jerk.
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@ixokai said in Harassment in VR, there's something we can likely learn from this.:
I don't disagree with any point you have here-- in fact I agree with most-- there is a segment of Staff who think rules are important, and that Staff acting in a way that are arbitrary and not in adherence to stated policies is bad. I think this view is not-invalid, though I am inclined to lean otherwise.
You have a rule: "don't be a jerk". Or do your rules actually come out and say "we do not consider any behaviour jerky until someone says 'no'"? (If you do have that rule, you're fucking idiots.)
Or did you make the mistake of listing every possible jerky situation you could think of thus giving Mr. Creeper an implicit list of things he can do that "aren't against the rules"? (If you did that you're still fucking idiots, just of a different kind.)
Seriously, dude is causing damage to your game. TURF THE DUDE! You're not a nation state bound by a constitution.
