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Oldmike wrote: Wow so in Tennessee you can be changed with rape for telling someone you are a rich doctor is that how 4 is defined?

I don't know anything about Tennessee rape case law, but I'd doubt it. Pure speculation, I'd guess two scenarios envisioned by that are a person promising a woman marriage, sleeping with her, and than abandoning her (a common law cause of action in civil courts, btw), or a person pretending to be somebody else, such as at the end of Revenge of the Nerds.

djones520 wrote:A woman drugging a man, and then having sex with him, is still not considered rape. The victim was not "penetrated".

In at least the two states that I looked up, it would totally be rape.

jasper76 wrote: Wow, #2 and 3 seem like they were intentionally placed there to give any rapist a pass. The "I was too drunk to know better" defense.

The law doesn't work like that. Drunkenness is rarely a defense, and anything they would have known, or should have known, sober, they are held liable to while drunk.

Sure Polonious, I know that there are some states that are like that, but as the Federal law is written, and such states like Tennessee, it's not.

Michigan for example is a state that any unwanted sexual contact is considered sexual assault (the states term for rape). So it's a mixed bag across the country.

 jasper76 wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
I think you are misinterpreting that Jasper.

I don't know. If the prosecution can't prove 1 or 4, and the defendent was drunk, I don't see how you get a conviction. "I was too drunk to know there was no consent" and "I was too drunk and to know the victim was defective, incapacitated, or defenseless" seem like valid defenses against a rape according to this law.

Not to get into the nitty gritty, but how drunk would you have to be to be unable to tell that a person wasn't into having sex with you, while still functioning?

AS for mental capacity, you'd basically have to argue that you were nearly black out drunk when you first met the person, but decided to have sex with them.

This is stuff of law school hypotheticals, but in practice stuff like this would be plea bargained pretty quickly.

 Polonius wrote:

jasper76 wrote: Wow, #2 and 3 seem like they were intentionally placed there to give any rapist a pass. The "I was too drunk to know better" defense.

The law doesn't work like that. Drunkenness is rarely a defense, and anything they would have known, or should have known, sober, they are held liable to while drunk.

I must have missed the clause that said "being drunk is not a valid reason for not knowing that the victim did not consent". Maybe that's just assumed?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:

Not to get into the nitty gritty, but how drunk would you have to be to be unable to tell that a person wasn't into having sex with you, while still functioning?

Black out drunk, I suppose.

 djones520 wrote:
Sure Polonious, I know that there are some states that are like that, but as the Federal law is written, and such states like Tennessee, it's not.

Michigan for example is a state that any unwanted sexual contact is considered sexual assault (the states term for rape). So it's a mixed bag across the country.

I'm not sure what you mean. Federal and Michigan law don't really use the term rape, but felonious sexual assault or sexual abuse for both do not require that the defendant penetrate the victim. For example, Michigan reads: "Sec. 520b. (1) A person is guilty of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree if he or she engages in sexual penetration with another person and if any of the following circumstances exists:"

Federal crime simple reads "Whoever...knowingly causes another person to engage in a sexual act—
(1) by using force against that other person..."

Yes, a generation ago most rape statutes were written with the idea that men raped women, but most have changed over the decades.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jasper76 wrote:
I must have missed the clause that said "being drunk is not a valid reason for not knowing that the victim did not consent". Maybe that's just assumed?

It's been nearly a decade since I touched criminal law, and that was only in school, but yes, I believe it's assumed.

Either way, it becomes a question for the jury, not for the police. You'd have to convince a jury "sure, I had sex with a passed out/mentally incompetent" person, but you see, I was too drunk to notice!"

As with many things... you try that out first, and let me know how it goes!

Black out drunk, I suppose.

The problem becomes... you'd have to be too drunk to be able to realize that you're trying to have sex with somebody that can't possibly consent, but not too drunk to remember that you didn't notice. No offence, but if you're black out drunk, you have no way of testifying credibly about what you did, or did not, know.

It's OK I'm not offended at all. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility to convince 1 sympathetic juror that you could not know because you were too drunk.

Anyway, I feel like I am defending drunk rapists. My only real point was the Tennessee law seemed pretty vague with #2 and #3, that's all.

 djones520 wrote:
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=317

Rape - Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means penetration by the offender(s). Includes attempted rapes, male as well as female victims, and both heterosexual and homosexual rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape

How is this false unless the victim is penetrated it is classed as Sexual assault listed as made to penetrate. This is US law UK may be different.

Each state has its own law as well, but many states are identical to that. Tennessee for example.

 jasper76 wrote:
My only real point was the Tennessee law seemed pretty vague with #2 and #3, that's all.

That's actually not uncommon, and it's one of the reason non-lawyers often get into trouble when they try to read the law: they don't understand all the context. There are all kinds of rules and practices that go into criminal law that makes analyzing the text almost silly. If nothing else, there is almost certainly case law on whatever issue you have. I don't have a Westlaw account, or the time to dig through it, but I'm guessing somebody has tried the drunk defense, and there's an answer from the court whether it is appropriate.

 jasper76 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
Each state has its own law as well, but many states are identical to that. Tennessee for example.

Tennessee explicitly allows for the defendant to be penetrated by the victim:

39-13-503. Rape.



(a) Rape is unlawful sexual penetration of a victim by the defendant or of the defendant by a victim accompanied by any of the following circumstances:

(1) Force or coercion is used to accomplish the act;

(2) The sexual penetration is accomplished without the consent of the victim and the defendant knows or has reason to know at the time of the penetration that the victim did not consent;

(3) The defendant knows or has reason to know that the victim is mentally defective, mentally incapacitated or physically helpless; or

(4) The sexual penetration is accomplished by fraud.

Wow, #2 and 3 seem like they were intentionally placed there to give any rapist a pass. The "I was too drunk to know better" defense.

Note that it's "any", not "all" of the following.

I think we missed the turning guys, we should have gone left at the topic back there, much as I'm enjoying the details of comparitive state law.

Personally I think that the OP article was designed to create this controversy, the language used is deliberately emotive and provocative, to provoke reaction and debate. It's been successful at that, on this forum at least, but I'm not seeing much of a reaction beyond the walls of the hobby.
I take my wife and daughter into my local games store, but I seriously doubt they would go if I was not there. But even if they did, I would be confident that they would be treated equally, if not awkwardly, by the regulars. However, I fully recognise that one shop is not representative of the whole hobby, there may exist a dingy hole, full of salivating sexual predators, but I've not found it yet myself.
I sincerely hope that such a place does not exist, even beyond the need to actively attract more participants of either gender to our hobby, we should be as inclusive as possible.

I've been to one GW store. It is small and cramped and packed with young men (only young men, every time I've been) with only one person working who looks about 19. I'm not saying by any stretch its a den of harassment, because I wouldn't know, but its not the kind of place I'd want a hypothetical daughter of mine to be spending her time.

Doesn't that attitude support the argument of the article? That in some way these environments are unwelcoming, or in fact dangerous for females?
Whilst by and large most GW and game stores have been the province of young men, I have also met several women who patronise and work there too.
I don't believe that the ones I have met have had cause for complaint, but I couldn't say that was true for all women.

If, however, they were treated poorly by an individual, I would hope that the management would treat the case seriously, fairly and robustly.

Well, virtually all social enclaves made up mostly of men are pretty rough places for women. I think that gaming is not a particularly welcoming place for women, based on what I've seen, what female gamers have told me, and based on the attitudes of at least some of the gamers I know pretty well.

I think you add in the relatively low social status of most gamer guys, and you get a pretty toxic combination in some of them. There is very little awful conduct towards women that I'd categorically find implausible, and while the OPs story certainly doesn't seem to hold water, I think there is deep rooted hostility to women in gaming.

It's the same for every place that's highly dominated by either gender or even race. Be it a man picking up your daughter at the kindergarten or a white guy strolling through the bronx, if you enter an area / field that is dominated by a specific group, you can't count on being welcomed all of a sudden. It's how humans work.

 r_squared wrote:
Doesn't that attitude support the argument of the article? That in some way these environments are unwelcoming, or in fact dangerous for females?
Whilst by and large most GW and game stores have been the province of young men, I have also met several women who patronise and work there too.
I don't believe that the ones I have met have had cause for complaint, but I couldn't say that was true for all women.

If, however, they were treated poorly by an individual, I would hope that the management would treat the case seriously, fairly and robustly.

I suppose so. I mean, my own wife won't go to my flgs because she was ogled and commented at there, and that was st a place that actually is frequented by many young ladies, as well as children.

You know, when I first read the article, I probably had the normal response: I hacen't been witness to anything as bad as what she's describing in her anecdotes, so it must be BS. But then I asked myself, why do I think that way? The answer basically boils down to (a) because her writing style seems intentionally provocative, (b) her method of argument isn't very refined, and (c) she illogicially incriminates the many for the actions of the (presumably) few.

The truth is, I have no way of knowing if her assertions are 100% lies, 100% truth, or somewhere inbetween. And fortunately, I don't have to know. What I do think is that stores can and should do more to make gaming areas safer for women

 Sigvatr wrote:
It's the same for every place that's highly dominated by either gender or even race. Be it a man picking up your daughter at the kindergarten or a white guy strolling through the bronx, if you enter an area / field that is dominated by a specific group, you can't count on being welcomed all of a sudden. It's how humans work.

Sort of. A community that's relatively high status, but with a sharp gender/racial skew, will paradoxically often be more accepting of outsiders. A rich black kid at Harvard is still a rich kid. Also, for all of the beating it's taken, the concept of privilege kicks in here as well. When a subculture is made up of the dominate gender and race, it tends to be far more hostile to outsiders than a subculture is overwhelmingly minority. Look at male RNs, who tend to out earn female RNs, or the success of white rappers with the relative paucity of black country acts.

In essence, subcultures for white males, of which gaming very much is, albeit far more male than white, is seen as a place for guys that don't always fit in with mainstream culture. It's their subculture, and one of it's defining features is low social status, as seen by limited dating options. I wouldn't say hostility to women is baked into the culture, but a resentment towards women certainly is.

As someone who's worked at a game store, I can say from personal experience that things like this happen (albeit thankfully not the point of physical assault). As an employee, you obviously put a stop to it whenever you see it or when it's reported, kicking out the offenders. My former employer, being a decent human being, has an official policy in place supporting his employees in doing so.

However, we can't be everywhere to enforce the rules, and the community in general does a rather gak job of policing itself. After all, we're generally a hobby of socially awkward individuals, and for all the talk of punching out these scumbags most gamers would rather hide their heads in the sand than risk actual confrontation. That's a feature that humanity in general seems to have, but exacerbated here.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
31,000 rapes recorded by police in England and Wales in the year to June 2015.

6,448 cases of perverting the course of justice. This includes various offences of which false accusation of rape is one.

Source:
02appendixtablescrimeinenglandandwalesyearendingjune2015final_tcm77-419663.xls

from the Office of National Statistics web site

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/2015-10-15

If you look up the details on false rape accusations, it's very uncommon. Here's a report from the Crown Prosecution Service research archive.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/research/perverting_course_of_justice_march_2013.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwie5PO-ifzLAhVCqxoKHUNWCAoQFggbMAA&usg=AFQjCNGXrZK26UOubysD29Hp2tZkaOzyfw&sig2=rKGpdFeU-nNMkWqaRB-1jw

perverting_course_of_justice_march_2013.pdf

If anything, a 10 to 1 ratio of rape to false rape accusations is a conservative estimate.

Fantastic, thanks for the source for your claims. My problem with their stats, as per their report:

Police recorded crime

Police recorded crime is the primary source for sub-national crime statistics and for relatively serious, but low volume, crimes that are not well measured by a sample survey.

Statistics based on police recorded crime data do not currently meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics (further details are provided in the ‘Recent assessments of crime statistics and accuracy’ section).

In this, they admit that their police recorded crime data is not complete, and later they theorise that the figures are less than in reality due to underreporting. There's no way to know though, that's admitted speculation.

Notes for understanding crime statistics

Police recorded crime statistics are based on the year in which the offence was recorded, rather than the year in which it was committed. Therefore, such data for any given period will include some historic offences that occurred in a previous year to the one in which it is reported to the police.

This I have an issue with, as I'd prefer if the data correlated to the year the offense was committed, but I can understand this only means historical data would be complete due to the lag it takes for cases to get investigated and go to trial. Still frustrating though, because you're not looking at when crimes are committed, and if those crimes are going down or up in frequency. Its outside the scope.

7. Sexual Offences

It is thought these rises in police recorded sexual offences were due to both an improvement in recording by the police and an increase in the willingness of victims to come forward and report these crimes to the police.

The rises in the volume of sexual offences recorded by the police should be seen in the context of a number of high-profile reports and inquiries, which is thought to have resulted in police forces reviewing and improving their recording processes.

HMIC found records of crimes on these systems which had not made it onto the force’s main crime recording system. Those that had not been recorded on the force’s crime recording system would therefore not have fed through into official statistics. As forces have taken steps to improve their systems and recording processes, it is likely that proportionately more referrals are appearing in the official statistics.

And here's the rub, speculation that the increases in number of rapes are due to better reporting, not more offences.

As for the perverting the course of justice statistics, they admit that:

In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes which are associated with these cases. One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife.

They've started with the conclusion, and worked backwards. You're supposed to collect data first then analyse it, not start with a theory they want to prove.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Erections are not part of the somatic nervous system; drugs would probably not be required.

But there are drugs specifically for getting an erection (see Viagra and derivatives). It might not be as common for men to be abused in that manner but it's in no way impossible. Besides, as the erection is a quite autonomous function you might find men being "used" when drunk, drugged or just otherwise incapacitated a bit more common that you'd expect. They're just even more ashamed than women to go tell that to the police.

Spetulhu wrote:
They're just even more ashamed than women to go tell that to the police.

Back when I was 14, my older sister (18) held a party at our house while my parents were away. She had heaps of her friends over and I invited one too. During the course of the evening he was physically restrained by two young women, one of whom took his virginity. So far as I know, he never told anyone about this for at least a decade. He was never 'proud' he'd had two women or thrilled about having sex. He was terrified and ashamed and to my shame I never spoke up about it either. Even worse, those girls thoroughly believed they were doing him a favour.

 Sigvatr wrote:
It's the same for every place that's highly dominated by either gender or even race. Be it a man picking up your daughter at the kindergarten or a white guy strolling through the bronx, if you enter an area / field that is dominated by a specific group, you can't count on being welcomed all of a sudden. It's how humans work.

Sure, but if someone wrote an article about how every time they walked through the Bronx, they got stares, someone call out 'go home cracker!', he was made to feel vulnerable and unwelcome and even if he once got assaulted just for being white, would it be fair to write an article saying 'The Bronx has a problem with black male terrorists'?

 Kojiro wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
It's the same for every place that's highly dominated by either gender or even race. Be it a man picking up your daughter at the kindergarten or a white guy strolling through the bronx, if you enter an area / field that is dominated by a specific group, you can't count on being welcomed all of a sudden. It's how humans work.

Sure, but if someone wrote an article about how every time they walked through the Bronx, they got stares, someone call out 'go home cracker!', he was made to feel vulnerable and unwelcome and even if he once got assaulted just for being white, would it be fair to write an article saying 'The Bronx has a problem with black male terrorists'?

Of course it would not be "fair". The thing you have to understand about these sorts of debates over racism and sexism is that there are double standards in play.

 Polonius wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
It's the same for every place that's highly dominated by either gender or even race. Be it a man picking up your daughter at the kindergarten or a white guy strolling through the bronx, if you enter an area / field that is dominated by a specific group, you can't count on being welcomed all of a sudden. It's how humans work.

Sort of. A community that's relatively high status, but with a sharp gender/racial skew, will paradoxically often be more accepting of outsiders. A rich black kid at Harvard is still a rich kid. Also, for all of the beating it's taken, the concept of privilege kicks in here as well. When a subculture is made up of the dominate gender and race, it tends to be far more hostile to outsiders than a subculture is overwhelmingly minority. Look at male RNs, who tend to out earn female RNs, or the success of white rappers with the relative paucity of black country acts.

In essence, subcultures for white males, of which gaming very much is, albeit far more male than white, is seen as a place for guys that don't always fit in with mainstream culture. It's their subculture, and one of it's defining features is low social status, as seen by limited dating options. I wouldn't say hostility to women is baked into the culture, but a resentment towards women certainly is.

No offense but I think you are basing your argument heavily on a stereotype that is not necessarily backed by the facts. Recent servery by the pew research center was done of gamers. They found that facial minorities like blacks and Hispanics were more likely to identify with the term gamer than whites. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/15/gaming-and-gamers/

I have seen data there and from books I have read like Proteus Paradox that points to gaming being more diverse than people often think it is.

My own personal experience is that I have met also quite a few LGPT while gaming over the years as well. More than one would expect given the size the subculture.

Gaming in my experience isn't a culture that is hostile to people based on sex really or other demographics. There are bigoted people sure but generally it is subculture were acceptance is based on "geek cred". For instance if you actually watch videos on youtube criticizing Anita Sarkeesian (mentioned previously in this thread) the problem some people, including women seem to have is not that she is women, is that they think she is a poser. She lacks the the "geek cred" and therefore is not really "one of them".

So I have seen lots of examples of the years of people from gaming being hostile towards people like anita, or jack thompson. It isn't necessarily due to any form of bigotry against someone like jack thomspon for example it is what I have seen one blogger at forbes call revanchism. Basically being a gamer to many of these people is very strong part of their identity, so much so that they attack anyone they see as threatening that. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/09/03/metroid-hero-samus-aran-can-be-transgender-or-not-and-the-world-will-keep-spinning/#eee90af1a710

 Polonius wrote:
Well, virtually all social enclaves made up mostly of men are pretty rough places for women. I think that gaming is not a particularly welcoming place for women, based on what I've seen, what female gamers have told me, and based on the attitudes of at least some of the gamers I know pretty well.

I think you add in the relatively low social status of most gamer guys, and you get a pretty toxic combination in some of them. There is very little awful conduct towards women that I'd categorically find implausible, and while the OPs story certainly doesn't seem to hold water, I think there is deep rooted hostility to women in gaming.

That sounds quite Freudian, why do you have a deep rooted hostility towards women?

I know it's fun to point at sub cultures and point out all their faults and project them onto the entire community, but lets remember it's a sub culture. attitudes towards women were developed long before gamers started throwing dice. So you should have said, 'there's a deep rooted hostility towards women in america'.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
It's the same for every place that's highly dominated by either gender or even race. Be it a man picking up your daughter at the kindergarten or a white guy strolling through the bronx, if you enter an area / field that is dominated by a specific group, you can't count on being welcomed all of a sudden. It's how humans work.

Sort of. A community that's relatively high status, but with a sharp gender/racial skew, will paradoxically often be more accepting of outsiders. A rich black kid at Harvard is still a rich kid. Also, for all of the beating it's taken, the concept of privilege kicks in here as well. When a subculture is made up of the dominate gender and race, it tends to be far more hostile to outsiders than a subculture is overwhelmingly minority. Look at male RNs, who tend to out earn female RNs, or the success of white rappers with the relative paucity of black country acts.

In essence, subcultures for white males, of which gaming very much is, albeit far more male than white, is seen as a place for guys that don't always fit in with mainstream culture. It's their subculture, and one of it's defining features is low social status, as seen by limited dating options. I wouldn't say hostility to women is baked into the culture, but a resentment towards women certainly is.

do you have any studies to back up any of that? It sounds like BS to me. Most of the gamers I know are married, and over 1/2 of them have kids. You're still sounding Freudian here and seem to be projecting your feelings onto the community.

sirlynchmob wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Well, virtually all social enclaves made up mostly of men are pretty rough places for women. I think that gaming is not a particularly welcoming place for women, based on what I've seen, what female gamers have told me, and based on the attitudes of at least some of the gamers I know pretty well.

I think you add in the relatively low social status of most gamer guys, and you get a pretty toxic combination in some of them. There is very little awful conduct towards women that I'd categorically find implausible, and while the OPs story certainly doesn't seem to hold water, I think there is deep rooted hostility to women in gaming.

That sounds quite Freudian, why do you have a deep rooted hostility towards women?

I know it's fun to point at sub cultures and point out all their faults and project them onto the entire community, but lets remember it's a sub culture. attitudes towards women were developed long before gamers started throwing dice. So you should have said, 'there's a deep rooted hostility towards women in america'.

Huh? This woman is Canadian unless you count that as American in this case.

I don't think there's a deep rooted hostility towards women at all. More that the gamer guys esp. at tabletop wargaming places are just very socially awkward. That means when a pretty girl somehow decides to venture in things can get awkward. I've seen some not so pretty girls in the store. In fact I'm willing to say a lot of girlfriends have been of the not so good looking variety.

There's one girl there that is attractive but she is currently another guy's girlfriend that goes to the store. Ho ho ho and you wouldn't believe how willing the GW store owner and another guy in the store were to alienate me at first possibility. My only comments to one were "So. Who's girlfriend is she?" (said in a very disappointed and uncaring way) and the guy says "Don't flirt with her! She hates guys that do that!" Funny thing is this very guy later becomes her boyfriend. Haha I guess he just tried to eliminate competition. Keep in mind this was said at a local sandwich place when she wasn't there at the moment. Oh and in another case when she wasn't there I said near the store manager something along the lines of "Wow! She's pretty!" and he said "Yeah and if you ever make her feel uncomfortable i'll kick you out of the store." Funny bit as a guy that wasn't willing to make her uncomfortable in the first place I find it disgusting how fully ready he was to knock out a long time customer of years for an attractive girl that came in that hadn't even started an army yet. As I said I wasn't even wanting to make her uncomfortable so it seemed like such an extreme response for somebody that had yet to do anything really wrong and aside from warhammer fantasy being killed and shunned by the store owner was one of the things at the GW store to alienate me. Fairly certain the GW manager there alienated me just for not buying enough as well when I was unhappy with warhammer fantasy dying and he mentioned it at one point. I also find it funny at one point this same attractive girl was visibly hitting on a guy in the store until he started talking about his girlfriend. I guess it's totally ok for her to hit on us but not vice versa. But I mean it's totally ok for feminists to be hypocrites . Funny thing is as far as I noticed this girl is a decent person and I wonder what her responses would be if I told her about these guys telling this to me. It alienated me being told this by these other dudes in the store and made me less willing to talk to her and made me feel more awkward to even do so in the first place. I don't think awkward conversation is something anybody wants. I mean if somebody feels alienated just being around you I think you'd realize it and it'd make you uncomfortable too. It'd just feel very unnatural and uncomfortable.

Also of the about 3 regular female players at GW's that I've known about one was a wife of a GW player, one was introduced by a GW player and became a girlfriend of another GW player and the final one I don't know the full story of but was made manager of a GW store and was attractive. So yep they must have been totally mistreated. I mean it's not like their significant others would have come around and given us crap if we were mean to them (except they would have). And the 3rd girl man we were so mean to her we made her manager of a whole store. Typical sexist gamer boys am I right ? From what little I last heard she got married to her gamer boyfriend. Supposedly she was a great painter, preferred being seen as a gamer rather than a gamer girl (not really shocked) and probably wasn't such a good manager of the store (that said this info came from the most massive jerk employee I've ever known to work for GW so take it with a grain of salt).

Spetulhu wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Erections are not part of the somatic nervous system; drugs would probably not be required.

But there are drugs specifically for getting an erection (see Viagra and derivatives). It might not be as common for men to be abused in that manner but it's in no way impossible. Besides, as the erection is a quite autonomous function you might find men being "used" when drunk, drugged or just otherwise incapacitated a bit more common that you'd expect. They're just even more ashamed than women to go tell that to the police.

...that was my point. You don't need drugs to rape a man because getting an erection is not part of the somatic nervous system, and thus not something we have control over.

sirlynchmob wrote:
That sounds quite Freudian, why do you have a deep rooted hostility towards women?

I know it's fun to point at sub cultures and point out all their faults and project them onto the entire community, but lets remember it's a sub culture. attitudes towards women were developed long before gamers started throwing dice. So you should have said, 'there's a deep rooted hostility towards women in america'.

You're still sounding Freudian here and seem to be projecting your feelings onto the community.

sirlynchmob wrote:
That's just your white male chauvinistic attitude speaking where you feel the need to protect her from legitimate criticism.

You realise that "I know you are, but what am I?" is a form of argument that gets trained out of people in lower school, right? Immediately going "well actually it sounds like you're the real sexist!" isn't an actual point, but it seems to be your go-to tactic.

 Goliath wrote:

sirlynchmob wrote:
That sounds quite Freudian, why do you have a deep rooted hostility towards women?

I know it's fun to point at sub cultures and point out all their faults and project them onto the entire community, but lets remember it's a sub culture. attitudes towards women were developed long before gamers started throwing dice. So you should have said, 'there's a deep rooted hostility towards women in america'.

You're still sounding Freudian here and seem to be projecting your feelings onto the community.

sirlynchmob wrote:
That's just your white male chauvinistic attitude speaking where you feel the need to protect her from legitimate criticism.

You realise that "I know you are, but what am I?" is a form of argument that gets trained out of people in lower school, right? Immediately going "well actually it sounds like you're the real sexist!" isn't an actual point, but it seems to be your go-to tactic.

you'd think quote mining and taking things out of context would be included in arguments that should be trained out by middle school.

So is that what I'm doing? you base my "go to tactic" on two posts taken out of context? Does this mean you agree that any valid criticism of anita can only come from raging hatred towards her? and that the whole gaming community has a deep rooted hostility towards women?

sirlynchmob wrote:


That sounds quite Freudian, why do you have a deep rooted hostility towards women?

I know it's fun to point at sub cultures and point out all their faults and project them onto the entire community, but lets remember it's a sub culture. attitudes towards women were developed long before gamers started throwing dice. So you should have said, 'there's a deep rooted hostility towards women in america'.

Well, I'm a member of that sub culture, so I'm not exactly wild about trashing it. And yes, there are plenty of poor attitudes towards women in the broader culture, but gaming is the area in which men that wouldn't really be able to otherwise express that hostility feel comfortable doing so.

And me? I've got no beef with women. I'm married to one, work with them, manage them, and I've been managed by them.

do you have any studies to back up any of that? It sounds like BS to me. Most of the gamers I know are married, and over 1/2 of them have kids. You're still sounding Freudian here and seem to be projecting your feelings onto the community.

Well, it depends what you mean by gamer. the article is talking about the guys that hang out at the gaming store a lot, which probably precludes the professional, married gamers, who overwhelmingly game at home or in events.

I was at Adepticon last weekend. tons of good guys, more than a few women, and I'd guess that nearly everybody there was fine with women. But those are all people that have the means to travel to Chicago and game for a weekend.

Let's be blunt: gaming attracts some losers. And because gamers are oddly inclusive, we allow some awful behaviors, including the desire to exclude others, to go on because we don't want to lose members of our group.

As for projection, you might be on to something. I like my guy time with my buddies, and my wife generally respects that.


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sirlynchmob wrote:
Does this mean you agree that any valid criticism of anita can only come from raging hatred towards her? and that the whole gaming community has a deep rooted hostility towards women?

As a complete outsider, in that I don't play video games and I'm not really into internet culture, I find the criticism towards her bizarrely disproportionate to her alleged misconduct.

sirlynchmob wrote:
you'd think quote mining and taking things out of context would be included in arguments that should be trained out by middle school.

Please illuminate me as to the correct context in which I should take you saying "Why do you have a deep rooted hostility towards women?" and "That's just your white male chauvinistic attitude speaking". I'm genuinely curious as to how quoting the entirety of one of your posts is taking it out of context.

So is that what I'm doing? you base my "go to tactic" on two posts taken out of context?

Again, not sure how a direct quote of the entirety of a post is taking it out of context, but okay. You are responding to peoples comments by immediately retorting that there isn't a problem, but that they are the problem. That's what you're doing. At the time I made the post you had made 9 posts. (I just counted). Of those 9, 2 of them were accusing people of being sexist for disagreeing with you. A quarter of your posts exhibit this tactic. I would say that that easily qualifies as a "go to tactic".

Does this mean you agree that any valid criticism of anita can only come from raging hatred towards her?

Holy non-sequitur Batman! Erm, no? There are certainly things that can be criticised about her. I just think that frothing at the mouth while you post makes your arguments look bad.

and that the whole gaming community has a deep rooted hostility towards women?

Nope. Certain parts of the community, sure. I mean, there's an entire subculture of gaming seemingly devoted to opposing any and all efforts to promote inclusivity. You can't turn around and say that there's no hostility towards women. You just can't.

Getting back to the topic at hand and away from people having an e-peen shouting contest:

Another point that, so far I guess, hasn't been brought up yet is that this entire thing is a cry for help that falls upon deaf ears. That woman obviously has extremely severe psychological problems and is in dire need of professional help, but will not get it as she herself cannot realize it on her own and her story is welcomed by other psychologically conspicious women, re-inforcing her ill behavior.