Sexism, Misogyny and the rise and rise and rise of the internet asshole....

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

I can't preemptively mute people. I don't know who's going to be an asshole and who isn't. Don't you find it sad though? That men are complaining they have no where to talk about raping women or what their girl did to them 5 minutes ago? This isn't all male gamers mind you, many like having women around... many just want to bond with other gamers not just the pigs rolling in slop. Should I just turn off general chat and miss out on the ones that I could actually become friends with just so I don't upset a few assholes?

a reply to: Kali74

No, you're trying to limit the scope so as to paint me as a misogynist.
When it is quite simply not the case.

I'm sure at some point a comment later on would try to paint me as a "knuckle dragging misogynist" simply for my dissent.
It has already happened as a matter of fact.

I took the initiative to correct that.
I am arguing from the standpoint of people not just men *in a lot of cases it's just immature boys saying this crap* or just women have the right to.

a reply to: HarbingerOfShadows

I'm not trying to paint you as anything just providing a scenario. I do that a lot. Respond or don't. FNG.

a reply to: WhiteAlice

i've had that kinda treatment but nip it in the bud by saying something like "listen here, sonny, i'm old enough to be your grandmother. shame on you. show some respect. respect the GRAND!" hehe

my daughter, on the other hand, engages them right back in a cussing /insulting competition and takes none of it seriously. water off a duck's back. i dunno how she does it and i get after her for doing so, but she just laughs and says "eh, they know if they talk crap, i'm gonna talk crap right back"

she's impervious to most of it.

the problem here is, in some places in the world, talking crap right back, could land you into some serious trouble.

originally posted by: Kali74
We're all bolder online I think, but you are correct. I see it the worst in the gaming world. I play MMOs and regardless of the genre there they are in general chat, racist, misogynists... like reading off Storm Front. It's awful.

As far as personal stories, one particular MMO that I played, I was a really good pvper, often in leadership roles... this requires voice programs like TS or vent, some could handle the fact that I was female but several others couldn't. Death threats, rape threats... endless requests for 'cybz'... lies about cybz (thank-god for "screenie or didn't happen"). It died down after a while, but still at the time and even thinking back now it's shocking, the things that were said.

I don't advocate for censoring it, I'd rather know a psychopath/sociopath immediately but definitely more people need to pipe up and tell these assholes it's not okay to vomit all over chat like that when people are just trying to engage in entertainment.

i avoid reading general/trade chat in mmos. lol

a reply to: Kali74

That knife cuts both ways ma'am.

I did respond.
I just colored outside the lines so as to not be misinterpreted.
You don't get to set the parameters, sorry.

If my opinion was just limited to males, as you framed it to sound like *not unintentionally I am increasingly becoming sure*, I would be sexist.
I am not.
Thus, clarification.

The internet was far worse in the beginning...


Life has never been fair...

Some people just never understand this...

I am not going to bother debating with the same people here that argue with one another over the years over things they cannot change...

Life is all about positioning folks...

Figure it out, and you have less to complain about..

Male or female.

I am not surprised to see the people who complain the most, in the same position I left them years ago thou.

a reply to: HarbingerOfShadows

Perhaps you should re-read my posts sans assumptions.

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: undo

hopefully, i'm not one of the females that has upset you. lol i'm not dangerous, i promise!

That's what they all say.

Besides dangerous is a highly disproportionate maxim. It can mean anything and everything, so really I dont know what you mean.

i just mean that my opinion is not meant to do harm, social or otherwise, to men or women. i am in agreement with many here who 1) feel free speech is more important than polite speech by mandate, even though polite speech is so much more agreeable and in its own right, a higher artform, it's not something that should be enforced in the public arena by law, and 2) feel men are getting the short end of the stick in society, at least, in the western world.

To be honest, Nef, I'd congratulate you on authoring a thread which invoked such passionate debate.

A little off topic, but there you go.

Peace.

a reply to: Kali74

Perhaps you should try understanding what I am trying to say.

The truth is a lot of people are just sad,they live miserable lives and in the real world no one cares what they think, but in cyber space they get to be somebody all that pent-up rage is bought to bare in the mostly anonymous cyber space,while I am no psychologist the internet serve as some sorta release valve for these unfortunate beings they revel in the fact that someone pays any attention to them especially to their negative racist,sexist vitriol always an attention getter.

originally posted by: undo

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: undo

hopefully, i'm not one of the females that has upset you. lol i'm not dangerous, i promise!

That's what they all say.

Besides dangerous is a highly disproportionate maxim. It can mean anything and everything, so really I dont know what you mean.

i just mean that my opinion is not meant to do harm, social or otherwise, to men or women. i am in agreement with many here who 1) feel free speech is more important than polite speech by mandate, even though polite speech is so much more agreeable and in its own right, a higher artform, it's not something that should be enforced in the public arena by law, and 2) feel men are getting the short end of the stick in society, at least, in the western world.

Absolutely. I wish people would stop having a knee jerk reaction to people saying it's wrong to behave that way. When I and apparently you, Nef was clear about this too... say that it's wrong behavior and shouldn't be tolerated that men themselves should openly reject it... we aren't saying that it should involve legislation or any such thing. You ignore it all outright... I ignore it or engage but don't report it, because I can handle it. But just because I can handle it doesn't mean I should have to and honestly, to anyone that is defending this behavior, you're doing men a greater disservice than women.

People who speak against and hate the gender they are sexually attracted to have something within them that needs to be healed otherwise they are never going to have a successful, satisfying, nurturing, sexual relationship... and no matter how long or short you live, to live without that kind of love, is just awful and sad.

a reply to: Kali74

there we go.

i like this idea of trying to convince people to be nicer of their own free will. it's classy.

as i mentioned earlier in the thread: i love ALL of my children, and their gender is irrelevant as to the amount of love and concern i have for them. i do not want to see any of them treated poorly because of gender or any other genetic traits.

when i went to work at pepsi, some of the guys assumed we ladies would be too weak to do the job correctly. on one machine, you had to lift a 120 lb roll of flexible metal banding and put it on a machine used in strapping the soda can layers, to the pallet. i admit, it was heavy, about the equivalent of my body weight at the time, but i managed.

one guy saw me struggling with it, came over to "lend me a hand", picked it up and proceeded to drop it on my foot. i yanked that thing off my foot, straight up in the air, so fast lol the guy stood there with his mouth hanging open and then said, "well i guess you don't need help afterall." lol doh. moms have been known to lift entire automobiles off their children in car wrecks. we like being perceived as delicate flowers but, generally speaking, we really aren't.

as a woman, my muscles (when younger) were the equivalent to any guy of similar stature and weight distribution. i don't want to BE A GUY, i want to be human. we share almost all the same anatomical structures and given similar body types, can do pretty much anything a guy can do of equal stature.

a reply to: OpinionatedB

I see a rather large problem with any movement that will brook no dissent.
That anyone who disagrees to even the smallest degree is "the enemy".

oh just one more side story about my experiences in one of the first equal opportunity jobs in america, at the pepsi factory:

the plant where i worked created the cans, and the plant next door, put the soda in the cans. so a part of the process of making the can soda-ready, the cans would go thru a lacquer machine that would spray the inside of them and then into an oven that would bake the lacquer into the can. one of the first jobs i had there was the mind numbing task of standing at the opposite end of the oven's conveyor belt and watched the "flanges" of the cans, to be sure none were "split" so that once the lid was attached, the soda wouldn't leak out.

the job had hazards, such as being tested for lead poisoning every 6 months, hearing loss tests once a year, and you had to wear protective equipment like ear plugs and safety glasses. well i was looking down at the cans and bent down, to see one that just dropped that i thought had a split flange. just then my safety glasses slipped off, into the conveyor belt which was like a metal chain network with open holes in it to let the heat from the oven, rise up into the cans from below. the arm of the safety glasses, got caught in one of the holes and as the conveyor moved forward the metal plate at the end of the line, snapped the rest of the glasses off, leaving one arm sticking up. this caused the cans to "trip" and go into the shoot, side ways, stopping the entire production line. every minute the production line was not running, cost the company 3000 dollars (in 1978 dollars), so natural, this was a big deal.

i ran off to get the supervisor to show him what was happening. but he couldn't see the arm of the glasses that was tripping the cans. so i pointed to it, and the conveyor grabbed my finger and slashed the end right off, down to the bone. you shoulda seen the reaction of the men there. i had like 10 guys, all trying to perform emergency services on me lol it honestly only required like maybe 2 - one to hold my finger under the cold water (you could see the bone, it was nasty) and another to make sure i didn't pass out or something. but nope, 10 of them, all gathered around me, walking me to the bathroom, holding my arm still so the cold water could run on the wound and stop the bleeding
(it didn't work). had to go emergency room and have it cauterized.

after that, they all were alot nicer to me, cause i hung in there and didn't give up, even after losing the whole top half of my finger (they never did find the part that was slashed off) lol, even after being sexually harrassed, pallet tagged, and so on. yeah, i didn't drink pepsi after that, for quite awhile.lol

I've thought further on the subject of assholes on the internet, sexism aside.

The conclusion that I've come to is that the internet is full of assholes, jerks, dicks, pricks, control freaks, the ego-centric, prima donnas, et al. It has been since it's inception. Not unlike how normal life offline is full of them. They already exist, you're not changing the lowest common denominators for shiz. Like a small group of anti-social asshats in person, they congregate online too. Big deal. Like in real life, they talk plenty of ish. Big deal. None of it is exclusive to men as perpetrators, and women are not so special as to be the only victims of online buttmunchery.

I've been online for pushing 20 years, and have been in many games, on many forums, commented/read in many chat sections. The common thread is most certainly trollery, and it's just that -- trollery, and applied in a bit of a broad sense for me. The worst thing someone can do in response to a mouthy snit of a troll online is egg them on by responding period. Has no one learned anything yet? Let's revisit the golden standard for being online here:



The best way of dealing with trollery, and the lesser asshole posters, is indeed to ignore it. Take the goddamn wind out of their sails & quite biting back. It's the rise out of you they're after in the first place. Ignoring/shunning works wonders on ATS, we see it work firsthand for trolls & general knuckledraggers alike.

Furthermore, people need to know how to read better identify trading barbs, sarcasm, vitriol, etc. There's a big difference between a teammate telling me "Nyiah, flank the boss from that side if you can, sugar tits", and actually being malicious. Overreaction in itself is a compounding problem that does tend to make things worse than the really are. Any uppity girl that hears/reads what I do in game? Would mess herself & get the wrong idea from the start. It's called lighthearted jabs, don't break your brain trying to figure it out.

Bottom line: It's the internet. The internet is like a main street with nice joints & dive bars. Not everyone's going to be upstanding.