Juxtaposition - there is nothing worse than hypocrisy
After yesterdays' rant, I thought I should give some perspective. I'm normally a fun guy, with a bellowing laugh that is more infectious than bird-flu. I get involved with a lot of different things; log into the SMH website and read the titles given to the blue bar along the top - I'm involved with all of them directly and indirectly. Name a subject and I'll talk to you about it, sometimes insufferably so.
Yesterday I read an excellent blog on sexist behaviour in gaming, by Mark Sorrell. I wholeheartedly agree, and enjoyed his engaging passionate language. Here's my thoughts in response to it.
Myopia - there is nothing worse than sexism
An interesting read. It makes lots of salient and poignant arguments. The comments are worth reading as well.
One thing that struck me though, as it always does in these types of discussions, is summed up in this comment by the author, and it does take a little bit away from an otherwise excellent blog (but not much - read below):
"The best way of framing this that I ever heard was - when a man goes out on a date with a woman, the worst thing that could happen is the woman embarrassing him. When a woman goes out on a date with a man, the worst thing that would happen is that the man could rape and kill her."
By over/underplaying the opponents hand you undervalue the argument. In this example, the bias is clear - there are many other 'worse' things that could happen in both cases. But it is arbitrary (why stop at rape and kill? Why not go even further and say her house could burn down and family die? And that it is her date that struck the match? And so on so forth - reductio ad absurdum in reverse. And all that is to say nothing of the of the obvious opposite possibility that the man be raped and killed and the woman embarrassed) to draw the line in any event.
Sexism is not mutually exclusive, and it is fucked whoever perpetrates or enables it (Jackie-O, I'm looking at you). And for sure, the type and the amount of sexist behaviour and their effects are more prevalent against women. That isn't in contention, nor should it immediately be - the existing studies and stats overwhelmingly support such conclusions.
To downplay the effects against men when they are the victims does no one any favours. However, I don't want to harp on about this too much, as I think Mark deserves more credit and benefit of the doubt (that I may have misread the inference in that comment), as the point I want to get across, which I'm certain Mark would agree with is:
It truly needs to be a fight against sexist behaviour, in any guise, not just that which occurs to women.
An overarching point that can be taken away from Mark's post that is two-fold (the second of which viewers of ABC's Gruen Planet will already be familiar with);
1. Perhaps tackling male -> female sexism is the launch pad to tackling the broader problems with sexism, even outside of insular gaming communities.
2. If we change attitudes, a change in behaviour
For now, I just want to discuss the second of these external to the capsule that is 'sexist male juveniles' before bringing it back around, as is an interesting thought process and I think, the best way of attacking the issue without prejudicial treatment of one group or another.
Cognitive dissonance - there is nothing worse than hypocrisy
It seems there is an undercurrent of understanding that sexist behaviour is the norm on online gaming services. Anyone who has played an MMO for a length of time will attest to this. Anyone who has scored a lucky headshot in an FPS online will have borne the brunt of it. That's not to say it is accepted - I've quit guilds and left games or stopped watching streams because of rampant sexist language and behaviour.
However I'd wager I'm in the minority there. That it is accepted (perhaps that is too strong a word, maybe "passive ambivalent agreement" might better describe it) speaks to the attitude of those partaking in it, which in turn dictates the behaviours of those partaking in it.
There are many accepted ways of changing this. Role models, respected industry leaders and the like are perhaps catalysts that need to be unleashed. I've never subscribed to the role model ideal - the idea turns me right off - however it is clear that it can work. If nothing else, the Kardashians show how successful role models can be in selling attitudes and in turn affect changes in buying behaviour (among other things). Every successful sports person wears branding (endorsements); in this way it is advertising 101: successful sports star wears brand A of shoes, the imputation is that brand A shoe is what it is that makes this person successful (attitude), therefore you should buy brand A shoe and share the success also (behaviour).
The more successful advertising campaigns are always more pervasive and subtle than that in order to avoid cognitive dissonance (they might sell a lifestyle - look at alcohol ads or perfume ads), but that is the basic recipe. The dissonance can occur at any stage, people might like the brand A shoes but not the sports person, or they might like the sports person but take issue with a feature of the shoes.
To the point though, FIFA has had a 'Let's kick racism out of Football' campaign for some time, that by and large has been a success. It is advertised in the Football Manager games, many current and former football players star in ads for it and aside from that crusty old bum-crumpet Blatter
at FIFA's helm, it has been widely endorsed and successful.
Which leads me to wonder, where are the gaming industry leaders speaking out about this? Why aren't Kaz, Ueda, Newell, Kotick, Bleszinski, Miyamoto, Jaffe (and boy he'd be good at it I think), Molyneux (well, there'd be plenty of dissonance there I think, but that's fine) all speaking out about it? Making a clear point that sexist attitudes aren't acceptable? I'm not sure if a 'Press A to remove sexism out of gaming' campaign during loading screens is the way to go, but having industry leaders have clear, unequivocal and most importantly LOUD stance would be a start.
Hey elfinke, thanks for taking the time to write this, thought I'd give you my feelings on a few of your points.
ReplyDeleteThe embarrass/kill thing is me paraphrasing a much better version of the point made here: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_Daughter.html
"Men and women live in different worlds. At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.
Gavin de Becker "
And that was the point. It's not symmetrical. It is indeed much easier for a man to kill a woman than vice versa. And men and women both know that.
Anyway, this comes in to your point about sexism. I've recently read a distinction which stated that sexism should be thought of as prejudice + power (as should racism etc). This is quite a neat distinction, because it bundles the positive effects on the privileged and the negative effects on the unprivileged into one concept.
So in a society wide way, men cannot be the victims of sexism as they hold the power. (Individuals can in situations where women have power over men).
Which is again, a way of making us think about privilege, which is at the core of all this. It wouldn't matter *quite* so much if men were shitty towards women if they couldn't actually harm them. But they can. In the physical sense certainly, but as they also have the power and money, they have the ability to act on their prejudice in meaningful ways.
Which is a very long winded way of saying that I find it hard to get angry about the comparatively rare injustices against men when women have to suffer so many and in so much more mundane, insidious and ultimately harmful ways.
I am also very much trying to avoid telling women what to do. Who the fuck am I to tell them how to act or feel about being a woman? I now know I will never understand what it's like to feel that it's fine to do the things that women do to hide themselves from harm.
I spoke to a successful, middle-aged woman at an event the other night, discussed this with her and said how shocked I'd been by discovering just how widespread this self-censorship is. I apologised for what was going to be a horribly condescending thing to say and told her I didn't understand how women even did it 'I'd go to bed and never get out. That or kill people.' And she said 'well you just sort of get used to being a second class citizen.'
I've spent my life imagining the things women never tell men mostly consist of bras. To hear that was just made me amazingly sad and angry.
So again, men may get some serious shit, but they are not life-long second class citizens. It's not men's place to tell women to help us sort out or problems until we have done a MUCH better job of helping them with theirs.
Lastly, I have to directly contradict something you've said which, I am pretty sure, is straight up untrue.
"If we change attitudes, a change in behaviour might follow."
That's the opposite of how people work. You change behaviour and that changes attitudes. Cognitive dissonance is to blame for this. We base our opinions on our actions and not our actions on our opinions.
There's thing called the Ben Franklin effect, which kinda says that you're not nice to the people you like, you like the people you're nice to. If you lend someone money, you will like them more. So if you want someone to like you, get them to do a favour for you and they will then like you better for it.
They have to justify their behaviour to themselves. It is behaviour that changes attitudes, not attitudes that change behaviour.
Anyway, yeah, thank you for reading!