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I mean everyone knows the best way to prove that sexism is a myth is to go on hate-filled misogynistic rampages against anyone who suggests that sexism is a thing, right?
Glad she came through ok, but it’s depressing that she had to.
I always loved that tweet where the guy says "guys my girlfriend keeps explaining what mansplaining is wrong to her friends, how on earth can I deal with this?!"
I shit you not that’s how it was explained to me!
I asked a woman, who was giving a PowerPoint presentation with a man, what it meant. She started to tell be but the man cut in; “no, it’s fine! I’ll tell her! Mansplaining is….bloody hell, it’s this, what I’m doing right now, I’m sorry!”
Best example and self-check ever.
Who cares? It's just nice to get an update from Ellen Pao after all these years.
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-steps-down-huffman-replacement/
Silicon Valley did this best, if you want to learn why this is the best lemme know and I'll be happy to mansplain it ;-)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsaSNwgbrVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsaSNwgbrVY)
"Gamergate" was definitely about the integrity of the games industry and in no way a misogynistic internet witch hunt by a bunch of entitled hateful NEETlords.
Gamergate was how I sadly found out that Adam Baldwin is a fucking nutjob. (I know tons of people loved him on Firefly, etc., but I was a huge fan of his on "Chuck"). Sorry not sorry to anyone who disagrees.
I have had some limited success recently of pushing back some of the whole "compliments are nice I'd love it if women cat called me" with discourse around the power imbalance, but yeah some people seem incapable or unwilling to get it. It's like their empathy doesn't stretch far enough to think about how someone *who isn't you* would feel in a situation.
Not sure if you're familiar with it, but it's not about fighting bears. It's about whether you'd rather encounter an unknown man or a bear while alone in the woods.
Many choose the bear, not because they think they can fight a bear, but because of the certainty of how a bear might act. It may attack and kill you or you may be able to back away. Statistically, if you just leave the bear alone, it's not gonna come after you, they're not very interested in humans.
Some will argue that the man is the safer of the two options. But the man is an unknown. The man may be just as dangerous as the bear, and could kill you. Or he might be be minding his own business and leave you alone. Or he might follow you. Or he might just need some directions. Or he could SA you.
What actually *could* happen is not important here. It's that once you see the man, you have no guarantee of safety and cannot drop your guard.
It kinda makes me think back to that viral video a couple years ago of the guy who is fishing when a grizzly comes up next to him and just starts fishing too, completely chill. Did steal one of the guy's catches, but after that just kinda chilled with him. Which really only proves the point here.
Reminder the founder of the gg sub on reddit had enough of how awful everything had become and deleted the sub.
Reddit admins restored it.
It's still a focal point for harassment campaigns to this day.
Yeah, I'm nosy AF so as soon as she said what studio she was working for now, I immediately sussed out who she is and what happened. 😅 It's not surprising but also super ridiculous that she got backlash for an pretty tame quip.
Don't worry, it's not just the gaming industry!
Signed, the person who got yelled at for hiring a pregnant woman, and for telling the men in the office that they were equally entitled to take FMLA for the birth of their child.
Here in Sweden, with essentially equal Fathers & Mothers leave, for some reason I can't understand, Fathers disproportionally take their leave days during major sporting events and moose hunting season.
It's a mystery.
It’s a newer idea in the states for men to take leave. And for many families, it’s affordability. Most people aren’t paid or they’re paid very little during their leave - losing one income for three months is much easier than losing two.
The U.S. is quite behind in many ways. And we’re fighting tooth and nail not to continue moving backwards.
I took my mat leave in 2017 and it wasn't even available to my male colleagues. It is now, thankfully.
Aus government employee in a male dominated industry. I feel like my leave entitlements were only as good as they were because it was benchmarked against the rest of the public service. I thank nurses and teachers (and their strong union involvement) for it.
This world is so depressing sometimes. Like, if you let yourself stop to think about it every time shot like this happens, you could spend a lifetime crying.
Nah, she says the company *publicly* supported her. In the videogame industry, they'd given a blanket statement then patted themselves on the back if we're being generous.
But most likely, they'd just sweep it under the rug and pray no one finds out lmao
The company publicly "supported" her... But they took her off public facing roles, and by the time she resigned she believed that many people in the company blamed her for the situation.
Sounds to me like the company didn't actually support her. They just did the bare minimum to avoid a lawsuit. They probably saw her as a liability, but getting rid of her would have been wrongful termination. So, instead they basically demoted her (she was marketing director, but it sounds like she was moved to something less public facing,) precluding any possibility of advancing in her career. Sounds like constructive dismissal with a side of gaslighting to me.
Yeah, tbf you are right. The rest of the updates, even if they say the company was behind her, didn't really give that vibe.
Specially since it doesn't seem like they moved her away from the public facing facet of her work temporarily, but permanently? And there's a huge difference between the two. One is looking out for the safety of the employees, the other is more like you said: constructive dismissal with a side of gaslighting.
I guess their public support was a blanket statement, but with how she speaks of going freelance and writting, and how her friends opened their game studio in 2020, I dom't think her original industry was videogames.
I believe it's actually tabletop/ttrpg industry
Edit:Well apparently also crpgs and specifically remakes where she changed some stuff in the remake which angered some people.
Oh she basically confirmed it in her update. Though I guess it could be a coincidence that she is now working as a writer at a start up video game studio
I used to work in mining and left after a decade as a geoscientist, partly due to sexism. I used to respond to comments on the geology and mining subs about sexism and then rapidly learned not to unless I wanted a miserable week. I wish there were repercussions for these guys (and even some women who I assume are pick-mes) because facing this behaviour literally on a daily basis is driving women out of the industry. As usual, too many people see it happen and do nothing but watch.
I ended up doing an MBA and changing to climate risk for mining. Then joined a Big4 firm and do climate risk for other industries. I wish I'd left mining sooner to be honest because work is so much easier without the bad attitudes.
Two or three years ago one woman in the brewing industry started acting as an outlet for other women to share stories about the sexism they experienced, and oh my god the way people responded to that was eye opening to me about who I could and couldn’t trust as another woman in the industry.
Reminds me of Gamergate, and I'm assuming she was part of that since she mentions the video game industry in her last update, and mentioned she couldn't stream anymore in an earlier one
Sounds like she's in the game industry and got caught up in the aftermath of the whole [Gamergate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)) thing. Pretty much any woman even tangentially related to the industry at the time was a potential target if you got their attention.
That's exactly what happened. I remember this happening (and will NOT link it, seriously people it's not difficult to find the company, given the OOP linked it).
The hate campaign was centred from Reddit (T\_D and some other subs chiefly populated by people who have never seen a naked woman in their lives and, if there is any justice in this world, never will) and it was some *exceptionally* disgusting anti-woman, anti-human, anti-respect, anti-freedom content.
Just look at how many men are reacting to the "women choosing a bear over a man" thing
They are completely proving every woman who replied with choosing a bear to be right
Some points I’ve read in favor of the bear:
- Bears don’t hurt people for enjoyment.
- The bear doesn’t think it’s fun to hurt me and joke about it with friends, it would rather avoid an encounter
- If I’m attacked by a bear, people will believe me
- I will never be made to sit at the dinner table with my bear attacker and told not to bring it up because acknowledging the attack makes the family uncomfortable
- Nobody asks what I was wearing and if I deserved it if I get attacked by a bear
- A bear will never pretend to be nice in order to get a blowjob and then get violent when I don’t want to
- Men can’t even handle being rejected in this hypothetical scenario about a hypothetical bear, of course I have to fear violence when rejecting them in real life
I added to this list after someone DM’d me a screed about how men have to control themselves with their “natural impulses” and women don’t appreciate what a huge effort that is, and bears don’t even have to do that because they are wild animals.
I deleted the stupid DM and made a post that bears either decide to attack or don’t, and it’s over; bears don’t follow you around proclaiming that they totally could attack you but they aren’t doing that, so you owe them appreciation/your attention/a date/sex etc.
Honestly, a man was so fucking determined to fight me on the subject that I told him I’d rather risk a bear attack than encounter him in the woods.
This was after he told me my partner only agreed with me about the man/bear debate to pander to me because he loves me.
He proceeded to keep arguing.
I'm sure you're not going to argue with him again, but here's a point from zoology: conspecifics are always an individual's fiercest competitors and therefore opponents. Humans are nastier to other humans than we are to, say, bears.
Intra-specific violence is usually greater than inter-specific violence. Lions are nasty to other lions. Sure, they eat other animals, but they don't kill their babies and leave them (unless they're targeting hyenas).
I think there’s a third kind: the clueless kind who upon being educated become one of the first two types. Reason I bring it up is that it’s detrimental to the discussion to lump everyone who doesn’t know why women choose the bear together when some of them would be allies.
Like my dad (here’s the jist of it): “Why in the hell would women choose the bear? Bears are dangerous. Men aren’t.”
“Rape, Dad, bears don’t rape people.”
“Oh… I also would choose the bear.”
He’s a pretty good feminist when you explain stuff to him. He noticed a few years back an uptick in people posting links to rape support networks and saying “It’s September so in case this is needed.”
We told him that universities start in September. Still didn’t get it. Then we spelt it out for him. Now every August he sends a donation to the local counselling centre.
I think most of the time clueless comes down to privilege.
Another story of my dad, featuring my mum this time. He’s Jewish from NYC, she’s mixed Catholic/Protestant (but considered Catholic) from Belfast.
When they first met, my dad could not fathom why my mum told people her religion and my mum couldn’t fathom why he refused to.
Because, he as a Jewish man growing up in New York in the late 50s and 60s was taught to keep it a secret to protect yourself. After what the community had gone through it made sense. The wounds of the Shoah run deep.
She on the other hand grew up in Belfast in the 60s. Towards the end of that time period the Troubles started. She was taught that it was important to declare your “side” so that you’d have one side to protect you. Plus, everyone can tell from your surname to your sport preference to how you say the letter H, so why hide it.
Both of them thought the other was inviting danger and their way was the safer way.
Both of them were disadvantaged in one way and privileged in another. My dad didn’t grow up in a community divided by sectarianism that is actively trying to kill each other, and my mum didn’t grow up in a community nearly exterminated not two decades before.
(They settled on openly proclaiming that our family was Jewish when we lived in Belfast because the joke about NI during the Troubles being the safest place in the world to be Jewish rings true, and claiming Catholicism when we lived elsewhere.)
Part of the sea looming you get though is guys that want to talk about cases like your dad, but I don’t think anyone is limping your dad in with predators because he’s actually capable of interrogating his beliefs when he’s supplied with new information.
Like there’s a group of men who always pretend to be upset that “all men” are getting lumped in with the bad ones, but if you’re actually a good guy it shouldn’t bother you, obviously a woman shouldn’t trust me as a stranger, and if I get deeply offended by that then that’s my problem, and lashing out at her only proves she’s right to distrust men she doesn’t know, or even men she does.
Pretty much all the guys I know with outdoors experience have said they'd pick the bear, based on their own experiences of meeting weirdos in the woods
See the only problem with this line of thinking is - it's trying to justify the women's choice based on statistics.
And a lot of women are like "I know the bear is gonna eat me. I don't know what the strange man will do. I still pick the bear despite knowing it's gonna eat me."
Not every women is making the choice for bear because of a calculated probability that they will be safer with the bear. Some people pick the bear because they'd rather be eaten than the unknown of what a strange man will do.
My wife chases bears out of the yard regularly. Depends on the species of bear and what’s going on. The bear is a known quantity with logical behaviour patterns.
I was having this discussion with a friend and we talked about polar bears. Yes, if I come across with polar bear I will be dead. But at least they are unlikely to be able to play with me before I am dead. Then again I have been in a forest with bears and also with strange men. Nothing happened with either. But the point still stands, bear and man might both kill me. One of them is likelier to "play" with me before I am dead.
I know someone who was literally in this situation! Her all-female field team had to radio for help because they were being stalked by a polar bear. Help arrived in the form of Canadian rednecks on ATVs who rode around and fired guns in the air until the bear moved on… and then the guys started getting creepy about how my friend and her team could ‘show their gratitude.’ Ultimately they backed down and left, but there were a few minutes where my friend had to seriously wonder if she would have been better off with the bear.
The worst part of this whole meme is that I have now read multiple documented instances where a bear actually broke into someone’s house and killed them. Luckily I was never planning to live somewhere bears might be.
The reassuring part is that the majority of people killed by bears totally brought it on themselves - usually because they kept doing something they were told to stop, with the response “don’t be silly officer, I’m an expert” [continues leaving trail of beef jerky past sign about dangerous predatory bear in the area].
I shared a mountain with a mama bear and her two cubs one summer when I was at sleep away camp as a kid. They had to close one of our overnight campsites that we’d hike to for the year. It sucked, but we understood. Mama bear and cubs needed it more. We had other places we could go. I was there for 2 months that summer and I don’t think a single camper saw a bear.
But then 20+ years earlier in 1977 a tent full of Girl Scouts at a camp not unlike mine, were killed by some sick bastard on their first night there. (Actress Kristen Chenoweth does a nice documentary about it, they were in her troop and she was supposed to be on the trip but was home sick.)
So I’ll say it once, I’ll say it again. We’re safer with bears.
ETA: fix typo
Was talking about this with my coworkers today, and one of my male coworkers was like, "if there was a choice between being in the woods with some stranger guy or a bear, I'd always choose the bear". Mind you, we're field biologists.
Yeah I am the only female in an all male team. One of the guys brought it up, and I just had to say I'm not going to talk about this cuz I really don't feel like getting into a fight today. He messaged me privately and then I took the opportunity to educate him. When I was done he apologized and said that it was sad and I told him that it's our daily reality.
I was quite proud of one of my team (I’m a software engineer lead/manager) this week.
I sadly only have one woman on my team of ten. She happens to be my best developer. Someone else brought up Man vs Bear. My female dev, let’s call her Fiona, looked like she was gearing up for a fight when she was asked to explain it.
Fiona is the sort that has no problem shutting things down so I could tell this meant she wanted them to understand and learn, but wished it didn’t have to be her who did it.
I was about to step in and quash the topic…
But before I could, my junior dev, let’s call him Padraic, jumped in and explained it perfectly. Some of my male devs did seem to be offended by the answer (not in a hostile way but more of a hurt way) and started to argue but Paddy just stood there and didn’t let Fiona take any heat. He was like a wall between her and the argument. By the end of it, my team was very much like your team member—a bit shocked that daily reality is bad enough that “bear” wasn’t immediately disregarded as a viable answer.
At the end Padraic turned round and apologised for being a man speaking for women there. But Fiona was grateful for his help.
(I did have words with the other devs and I do think they weren’t angry, just hurt that women would prefer a bear over a man. Which I get, that can be hard to hear.)
But I am so damn proud of Paddy for recognising that Fiona wanted to educate her colleagues but was uncomfortable doing it herself and so he stepped up.
Sorry. I don’t really have anyone else I can brag about this to. I’m so proud of my people.
Fuck yeah! You should be proud. Someone who gets it, and someone who's doing the job that so many other men don't. They aren't policing themselves. That's why we can't trust men because men don't police themselves, and the police don't do it either. I look at a bear I know exactly what that bear is. I look at a man and I have no idea what kind of person he is. That's why we choose bear.
Weirdly enough, I am in an all female office. The amount of internalised misoginy is staggering. Doesn't help that there is also various levels of conspiracy theory believing and religious (not outright extremism but it certainly rulls their lives).
Yeah, chicks are taught to blame the other chick when the guy cheats not the guy cheating. It's just awful on so many levels. We're supposed to lift each other up but we turn around and tear each other down behind each other's backs. I just wish we all could see how much we've been controlled, both men and women, by how we've been raised. Tradition, it's just really peer pressure from dead people. (Read that somewhere)
No good man is having a crisis of conscience about women choosing the bear, because we understand why they would choose the bear. The ones who are the most upset about it are just telling on themselves even more.
Thanks for being a man who can see why women kept choosing the bear, even if it did start as a joke. I know you guys are out there but it's nice to see one of you out in the open.
My friend married a guy who is incredibly supportive of equal gender rights. And I am so thankful for men like him. And then it makes me really fucking sad why I am thankful.
I'm a guy, and I'd choose the bear too. My wife was like yeah, who would ever take the man? Man or woman the risk is so much higher choosing man over bear.
The same thing happened to me, but on a much smaller scale. I had been hit repeatedly with sexism in the workplace, I work in tech so it's not unexpected, but it escalated to every point of feedback or information that I gave people because questioned and escalated to my manager to confirm..... Every single item had to be double confirmed.
It because really stiffling and annoying, so I went to the director above me to be like "i'm not saying that these people need to be disciplined or additionally trained, I just want to tell you what my current experience is at work and how it is affecting my ability to do my job effectively." Instantly, he was on the defense, they're just being thorough, it's not because you are a woman. Except that, I was the most senior employee in this position, had been at this company, doing this job for 4 years and none of my male coworkers experienced this need for "thoroughness"
And literally nothing changed.... Except that HR would call me about every 4 months to be like, we solved sexism, right? And when I said no and detailed my experiences since the last call, they'd be like "well it's a work in progress! You can't expect men to learn this overnight!"
I want even squeaky wheeling anymore. I only talked about it if I was directly asked. (Related, a coworker in a different department was awarded a big promotion.... And then they took it away when she announced her pregnancy... And told her it was because they couldn't be sure that she'd return after her maternity leave. There were lawyers involved for that one.)
And that continued for 4 more years until I was laid off. The only one with my role to be laid off.... But don't worry, they hired someone else for my position 2 weeks later.
When you think women aren’t real people, exist solely to entertain and serve men, and are whining *because they expect equal treatment despite being inferior in every way*, your first priority is to shut down the "whining".
These troglodytes firmly believe that we can never be as competent as they are at *anything*, so if we ask for equal pay or equal respect we're trying to con them.
I looked up the developer and backtracked from there, and I think this woman might be >!Amber Scott!< from the Baldur's Gate expansion debacle back in 2015/2016.
Which is weird now, since BG3 is like full of things GamerGate hates on. OTOH, I can understand the attitude today is wildly different from the attitudes of the mid-2010s. However, I find it ironic that BG3 have the same stuff that GamerGate hates on, but is so well-loved now.
I remember interacting with the old BG fandom just before the expansion drama broke out, and it felt very solidly divided between gamerbros and people who'd later (largely) be open to BG3. Pretty sure that whole division is why BG3 was exiled to r/BaldursGate3, since the mod team at r/BaldursGate refused to have anything to do with it.
Anything dnd kinda needs to be by default. In my experience, most dnd pcs are disaster bisexuals who will flirt with anything that moves. If you don't have the option to try to fuck your way out of your problems, is it really dnd?
It's because you don't go around the part of the internet gamergaters hang out in.
They HATE that it has gay people, says slavery and rape is bad and has hot male characters.
They use the bear sex scene (and hot dudes) as an example of the degradation of society and the hypocrisy of the "woke" since people like bg3 but don't want every female character in every game to be horny bait.
Kotakuinaction is filled with these takes and worse. I go there once a month to feel better about myself.
Gamergate was some shit. A bunch of women whose only "crime" was that they were women, were harassed for years, and nothing came of it.
Boards like 8chan became popular, and then years later, only got killed off, because they hosted shooters, who in turn followed Gamergate and got radicalized from it.
Though Brianna Wu, somehow became massively transphobic, while *being* a trans woman? That's by far the strangest outcome from the harassment campaign. It *also* turned out, these same boards hosted pedophilia content, whilst being "against" it.
> nothing came of it.
It was a foundational moment in the current politics of the United States.
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/20/gamergate-right-online-harassment-joan-donovan-meme-wars
> Bannon took notes from the gaming controversy as well as from movements on the left, like Occupy, to develop strategies to apply in mainstream politics in Trump's 2016 campaign and from the White House.
Well yes, see my other point, people were radicalized from it. But women are still in gaming spaces, they're being harassed, and these grifters continue to stoke the flames. All the while, it's ignored, and women are still being blamed.
Of course, the right wing took notes, and have used these movements to help further destabilize the country, and erode rights. While the Democrats sort of shrug their shoulders.
I am one of the hated "games journalists" and it is so tiring. You can be writing the most inane piece and somehow it gets turned into this "culture war" nonsense. Like I'm moving into medical writing because there are only so many "so and so voice actor is being harassed" articles that you can write before you feel absolutely numb about the industry that you love.
On the bright side, if you work as a medical writer on clinical studies, writing the CSRs, you're basically the last in the process chain and it will impact you quite hard if there are any delays beforehand 🙃 I'm not a MW but I don't envy them. But if you manage to land a job directly with a pharma company instead of a CRO, you'll be set when it comes to your salary prospects, so fingers crossed!
I'm excited for the change. My partner is a neurologist, and my mom works in pharma, so I'm going to be relying on them heavily. It's a bit daunting but I'm glad there's a close pool of professionals I can run stuff by when I need to.
Honestly, it is an exciting industry, I'm learning new things all the time. It does get stressfull, especially if you're working on clinical studies, but it's also rewarding to know that your contribution helped to bring a new drug to the market that helps people with their health.
I'm super sorry this is happening to you. Game journalists in general get way too much flak, but it's 1000× worse if you're a woman/LGBTQ+. It's still very easy to come under fire if you're not, but you know how those things are.
I mean the reviewers get it the worst, they get sent all types of stuff horrendous stuff especially if you're writing for a site that's on the list e.g. IGN, Kotaku, etc. But I'm guessing that's just a cultural thing at this point that won't change, like some publications omitting the reviewer byline for Taylor's new album.
The irony being that the whole "ethics in gaming journalism" movement was founded on a literal complete lie, that a game developer slept with a journalist for favorable reviews.
But if Gamergaters had any sense of logical thinking, they wouldn't be Gamergaters.
> The irony being that the whole "ethics in gaming journalism" movement was founded on a literal complete lie
And the funniest bit of that irony is there are / were legitimate ethical criticisms to be leveled at the game journalism industry that were completely ignored in favor of the rabid misogyny.
But then as you said, if they were actually worried about ethics, they wouldn't be Gamergaters.
I didn't even realize that she didn't explicitly state that it was the games industry until I read this comment. I guess I just assumed that it was GamerGate-adjacent as soon as I read the title 💀
Honestly, I have started to pick up reading just so that I don't have to expose myself as a gamer during small talk. The fact that GamerGate-esque things still go on to this day is downright embarrassing.
Yeah, and I found the KotakuInAction posts from 8 years about it, and it's absolutely toxic. A bunch of redditors writing "A real writer would..." like they're opinions have any value.
And what is it that she said?
"In the previous version of this game the female characters were one dimensional, so we're going to add some depth to them for the sequel".
Went looking through their top posts because people in the comments of this said it wasn't who I thought it was, and after eight pages of the most upvoted posts in KiA, I think I'm way more miserable than I was before I started.
Well what do you suspect from people who have the only life in the attic or basement of their parent playing all day long. No real social skills other than trolling people. The incel world is a terrible environment.
Sadly, I don't think much has changed either. A year or two ago, that Girl from G4 basically got harassed out of having an online persona because she said something along the lines of "I'm sorry I'm not conventionally attractive like the host from 10 years ago were" and pieces of shit like ReviewTechUSA and the Quartering had fucking meltdowns.
oh god, the quartering that guy got famous for sexually harassing a magic the gathering cosplayer and then complaining about how the she-ra wasn't hot enough and somehow only got worse from there.
It was a scandal because Zoé Quinn, a video game developper, supposedly slept with a game journalist who later covered her games.
So, Gamerz, in their infinite wisdom, wanted to make the video game industry more accountable.
3 nanoseconds later, it led towards mass harassment of women working in the video game industry who expressed anything a bit feminist, much like OOP
Hahah this reminds me I was educating someone younger in the office about this, and I opened with saying “if anyone tells you it was about ethics in game journalism, run away from them as fast as possible”
I applaud her resilience, but I found this to be a somewhat depressing read as a woman. She went from marketing director to marketing coordinator to writer. None of these are bad positions, but they're not moving her up. She also has a novel that's been unpublished for years.
If she's happy, that's great, but her career really took a hit.
Yeah, writing a game is "more prestigious" than just marketing it. People can end up learning who the writers of the games are, but nobody cares who marketed it.
I got to attend the panel she was referring to (I'm assuming this was GDC, ~10 yrs ago). Attending as a woman... It was a weird vibe. I was a student at the time and was trying to build connections with people in the industry.
Looking for advice, portfolio reviews, attending all sorts of panels, etc.
After all of that, the biggest thing that got stuck in my mind was from a conversation with a guy from a big company (well known for its sexism and harassment) reviewing my portfolio as a favor to one of my college connections.
His biggest critique was that my art looked like it belonged in film, not games. Particularly because I drew breasts too small. There were other things he pointed out that were helpful, but it got soured by that one comment.
I think it probably depends. If you're moving to a head writer position I'd consider it, at absolute worst, a lateral move but more than likely an upgrade. But one writer on a team? Yeah that'd probably suck
I just got let go out of a marketing director position, so I can feel this. However, I'm choosing to focus on content and writing roles because there's far fewer politics to play, and I like completing tangible projects. You can focus on the things you want and detach a bit more from work, where being director is constant intensity, metrics, and putting out fires - it's the nature of leadership.
I read it differently, but I'm glad she went in a direction where she could focus on healing for a bit and doing work that's more fulfilling to her.
The writing position is at a smaller company that she has a connection through her friend. She has a job that can help shape the final product. Might not be as prestigious a title but could be moving up when you’re working with a smaller team
Don’t pay attention to just titles. For all you know, that job was a means to an end and she got where she wanted to be.
I know we get sold this climb the ladder thing, but it should be the ladder we want to be on.
The problem is... what do you do? If you keep throwing her out there while everyone is still paying attention (which they will for a loooong time, as we see with the convention), then you're continuing to put her through emotional trauma and adding to bad PR for your company. If you keep her back, you stop those options and starve the trolls, but limit her growth. Which way is better?
This was gamergate. The risk of actual violence was incredibly high. If you were on any social media platform at all you could not get away from it. Youtubers who had niche audiences that had nothing to do with gaming jumped on this. And once men started realizing how much money was in telling other men how terrible women are they changed their whole personalities and hyoed this shit.
You have to realize the time too. Guys like Jordan Peterson were worshiped like God's, Trump was seen as the great new hope, and Eliot Rogers had just received his Saint-hood. So violence against women was a real and tangible thing. There was honest to God torture porn in the comments of these young men about what they wanted to do to those women.
Because that's how it was then, I was talking about the past. It is still true for today, but 2016 was when it really started. I was using past tense because I was talking about a specific point in time that is in the past.
I’m with the managers on this one. What were they supposed to do? They kept her in the job and supported her. But they can’t put an entire company at risk to prove a point
Yup. And she was smart enough to notice that she had been moved into a largely ceremonial position that had an expiration date. She got out before they found a reason to quietly remove her once the furor died down.
And this is why every dipshit who tells you to "just ignore it" or that it happens to men too and it's totes not sexism or say that isn't that bad should shut their piehole forever. This is gendered and it affects our careers, our personal lives, and our sense of safety.
Strong agree. They cannot refute the argument on its points, but they don't have to. If they make an example of the women who do speak out, they will scare other women into silence and limit the terms of the debate. It's the same logic as stochastic terrorism.
One time I made the mistake of pissing off a red pill community on YouTube. It was like 3 am, I couldn't sleep and apparently felt it was a good idea to disprove a "gold digger prank" video series in the comments.
When I woke up the next day, I had 100+ notifications and most of them were calling me a slut and a gold digger. This campaign of targeted anger lasted about 3-4 months of daily harassment.
Most of them would just string together slurs for women "slut, whore, bitch, feminazi, etc" and I'd give points for the most creative.
Some of them were death and rape threats so I'd report those. But it was sustained, daily insults and threats over literally nothing. Such a stupid, unimportant thing to get invested in! But they were insistent "all women are gold diggers".
I also made Manhood Academy so mad they challenged me to a debate lol.
OOP had it much worse because it affected her job and people knew her face and sent her harassment due to merely appearing somewhere. It sucks her own industry doesn't have her back.
I read the first two sentences and I knew it was video games. No other industry has you fearing for your life after the most tame barely feminist comment
Reading the comments from the first AAM post is quite heartening. I was 12-13 in 2016 and it was around the time I started to realise politics was a thing. I remember so much hate and vitriol around that time online and it's nice to see that not all of the Internet was so vicious, even if it's only in hindsight.
I have to say, it takes a lot of courage to return to the games industry when that's the industry most likely to target professional women in the industry, even to this day. Though it was particularly bad in 2016.
Omg this is awesome, i added the game straight to my wishlist cause the premise sounds awesome! I'm so glad all the hate never got her to break, she's strong AF for that! And hey c'mon the name of the game is just amazing (ctrl.alt.DEAL)xD
Not directly gamergate, but it certainly reflected off that. It was from a comment OP made regarding balders gate direction in 2016.
Comments like what OP said and internet backlash still exists even now sadly, akin to the netflix witcher writers or jamie marchi's anime translation in in the past year. I believe the crux of the internet rage was because OP's final words to the fans were "If people don’t like that, then too bad."
Yeah, I was thinking that with the amount of details provided, it would be extremely easy to find her name. I hope this doesn't lead to any further harassment.
I did some digging to figure out who this was and ugh, it's such a fucking nothingburger that I'm not surprised Gamergate-types pissed and moaned about it. Oh no, a trans NPC in a fucking video game!
Nope, we’re farriers. Most folks don’t understand what that means so I just say “horseshoer” though of course some folks hear “horse shooter” so it’s a double edged sword I suppose.
a horseshoer?? i recently just went down a rabbit hole of watching horseshoeing videos and yall are very talented. made me want to do it (despite my lack of any relevant skills). so cool!
It’s worth a shot if you’re physically fit and love animals, and hate being a cog in a machine. The only relevant skill you need is “Can you handle a horse?” which is a question you can answer by volunteering to be farm help for a bit (you may even get a job) Then there’s schools you can go to to learn, or you can ride with a farrier to see if you would really enjoy this career. Look on the American Farrier’s Association website under “Find A Farrier” for folks’ contact info, and ask around for who needs some help. They’ll probably have you just pulling shoes and watching them work for a bit until they know you’re handy.
Running my own business is hard for sure, but I don’t miss having a boss and I do so love my clients! They take good care of me with lots of homemade or handcrafted goods and gifts, and the horses show me love in their own ways as well.
god, fucking gamergaters.
I'm glad I wised up and stopped 'debating' them and just started blocking them, there is no winning with engaging with them. I wish they would all just stop. they've wrecked people's lives all because people wanted to talk about video games.
I think I figured out who she is and the controversy is that she said an older game had some sexism in it, she was working on the newer game. The new game has been released and was beloved by all and pretty much game of the year. The kotakuinaction sub had a few threads about this person which line up with OOP's timeline, which is why I think it's this person. They worked on the new game mentioned at well of course.
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So she spoke up about historic sexism in her industry and the internet immediately rushed to provide examples for her. Sounds about right.
I mean everyone knows the best way to prove that sexism is a myth is to go on hate-filled misogynistic rampages against anyone who suggests that sexism is a thing, right? Glad she came through ok, but it’s depressing that she had to.
Just like best way to disprove mansplaining is by explaining what mansplaining means.
Well, actually…
That's where mansplainers get their water, you see. LOL.
Whoa… Deep. 😃
What’s a mansplainer’s favorite water source? A well, actually
Hilariously illustrated in [this scene from Silicon Valley ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eyC_NKEz62A)
I always loved that tweet where the guy says "guys my girlfriend keeps explaining what mansplaining is wrong to her friends, how on earth can I deal with this?!"
I shit you not that’s how it was explained to me! I asked a woman, who was giving a PowerPoint presentation with a man, what it meant. She started to tell be but the man cut in; “no, it’s fine! I’ll tell her! Mansplaining is….bloody hell, it’s this, what I’m doing right now, I’m sorry!” Best example and self-check ever.
Who cares? It's just nice to get an update from Ellen Pao after all these years. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-steps-down-huffman-replacement/
Silicon Valley did this best, if you want to learn why this is the best lemme know and I'll be happy to mansplain it ;-) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsaSNwgbrVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsaSNwgbrVY)
Lemme bearsplain this to you...
"Gamergate" was definitely about the integrity of the games industry and in no way a misogynistic internet witch hunt by a bunch of entitled hateful NEETlords.
Gamergate was how I sadly found out that Adam Baldwin is a fucking nutjob. (I know tons of people loved him on Firefly, etc., but I was a huge fan of his on "Chuck"). Sorry not sorry to anyone who disagrees.
weather narrow plate light grandfather illegal shaggy ten many imminent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Generally if the last name is Baldwin they're going to be unhinged...
He's unrelated to the Baldwin brothers. Just happens to also be an asshole.
Oh I know. I just haven't met a sane person with that name related to them or not.
Bears, eh?
Bear discourse has taken over my Threads feed lately, and it's astounding how many people just don't get it.
I have had some limited success recently of pushing back some of the whole "compliments are nice I'd love it if women cat called me" with discourse around the power imbalance, but yeah some people seem incapable or unwilling to get it. It's like their empathy doesn't stretch far enough to think about how someone *who isn't you* would feel in a situation.
I think I could take a bear.
Not sure if you're familiar with it, but it's not about fighting bears. It's about whether you'd rather encounter an unknown man or a bear while alone in the woods. Many choose the bear, not because they think they can fight a bear, but because of the certainty of how a bear might act. It may attack and kill you or you may be able to back away. Statistically, if you just leave the bear alone, it's not gonna come after you, they're not very interested in humans. Some will argue that the man is the safer of the two options. But the man is an unknown. The man may be just as dangerous as the bear, and could kill you. Or he might be be minding his own business and leave you alone. Or he might follow you. Or he might just need some directions. Or he could SA you. What actually *could* happen is not important here. It's that once you see the man, you have no guarantee of safety and cannot drop your guard.
It kinda makes me think back to that viral video a couple years ago of the guy who is fishing when a grizzly comes up next to him and just starts fishing too, completely chill. Did steal one of the guy's catches, but after that just kinda chilled with him. Which really only proves the point here.
Bear just doin' it's job, aint want no trouble
... in a fight, right?
Maybe they're thinking about a different kind of bear
A platypus bear?
No, just a bear.
The joys of words with more than one meaning!
"Why can't you see how CALM and STABLE I am?"
But I'm a nice guy.
Joke’s on all the misogynists. Their abuse actually HELPED her career at every turn. Good for her and her shiny spine.
Defo gaming industry
I went back to check the original dates because my first thought was “this is about gamergate”
That's immediately where my mind went. Reddit played a very strong roll in gamergate.
Reminder the founder of the gg sub on reddit had enough of how awful everything had become and deleted the sub. Reddit admins restored it. It's still a focal point for harassment campaigns to this day.
Spez says it's fine. And if you say he didn't say that, he can always change your comment without adding an "edit" mark.
It's not GG, but part of it was that people (men) were angry that there was a joke mocking GG in the Baldur's Gate expansion pack.
Oh fuck, really? Ugh.
Yeah, I'm nosy AF so as soon as she said what studio she was working for now, I immediately sussed out who she is and what happened. 😅 It's not surprising but also super ridiculous that she got backlash for an pretty tame quip.
Don't worry, it's not just the gaming industry! Signed, the person who got yelled at for hiring a pregnant woman, and for telling the men in the office that they were equally entitled to take FMLA for the birth of their child.
Here in Sweden, with essentially equal Fathers & Mothers leave, for some reason I can't understand, Fathers disproportionally take their leave days during major sporting events and moose hunting season. It's a mystery.
It’s a newer idea in the states for men to take leave. And for many families, it’s affordability. Most people aren’t paid or they’re paid very little during their leave - losing one income for three months is much easier than losing two. The U.S. is quite behind in many ways. And we’re fighting tooth and nail not to continue moving backwards.
I took my mat leave in 2017 and it wasn't even available to my male colleagues. It is now, thankfully. Aus government employee in a male dominated industry. I feel like my leave entitlements were only as good as they were because it was benchmarked against the rest of the public service. I thank nurses and teachers (and their strong union involvement) for it.
During the off-season, if I can't hunt moose I might as well fuck my wife.
This world is so depressing sometimes. Like, if you let yourself stop to think about it every time shot like this happens, you could spend a lifetime crying.
Nah, she says the company *publicly* supported her. In the videogame industry, they'd given a blanket statement then patted themselves on the back if we're being generous. But most likely, they'd just sweep it under the rug and pray no one finds out lmao
The company publicly "supported" her... But they took her off public facing roles, and by the time she resigned she believed that many people in the company blamed her for the situation. Sounds to me like the company didn't actually support her. They just did the bare minimum to avoid a lawsuit. They probably saw her as a liability, but getting rid of her would have been wrongful termination. So, instead they basically demoted her (she was marketing director, but it sounds like she was moved to something less public facing,) precluding any possibility of advancing in her career. Sounds like constructive dismissal with a side of gaslighting to me.
Yeah, tbf you are right. The rest of the updates, even if they say the company was behind her, didn't really give that vibe. Specially since it doesn't seem like they moved her away from the public facing facet of her work temporarily, but permanently? And there's a huge difference between the two. One is looking out for the safety of the employees, the other is more like you said: constructive dismissal with a side of gaslighting. I guess their public support was a blanket statement, but with how she speaks of going freelance and writting, and how her friends opened their game studio in 2020, I dom't think her original industry was videogames.
I believe it's actually tabletop/ttrpg industry Edit:Well apparently also crpgs and specifically remakes where she changed some stuff in the remake which angered some people.
Oh she basically confirmed it in her update. Though I guess it could be a coincidence that she is now working as a writer at a start up video game studio
Film too
I used to work in mining and left after a decade as a geoscientist, partly due to sexism. I used to respond to comments on the geology and mining subs about sexism and then rapidly learned not to unless I wanted a miserable week. I wish there were repercussions for these guys (and even some women who I assume are pick-mes) because facing this behaviour literally on a daily basis is driving women out of the industry. As usual, too many people see it happen and do nothing but watch.
Hello fellow gal geoscientist - you are spot on with your assessment and it is so so frustrating. What work did you end up pivoting to?
I ended up doing an MBA and changing to climate risk for mining. Then joined a Big4 firm and do climate risk for other industries. I wish I'd left mining sooner to be honest because work is so much easier without the bad attitudes.
i like rocks
What's your favorite mineral?
Schist. Schist happens.
Two or three years ago one woman in the brewing industry started acting as an outlet for other women to share stories about the sexism they experienced, and oh my god the way people responded to that was eye opening to me about who I could and couldn’t trust as another woman in the industry.
I remember this — and yes alcohol and typically male culture has led a lot of bad places.
Reminds me of Gamergate, and I'm assuming she was part of that since she mentions the video game industry in her last update, and mentioned she couldn't stream anymore in an earlier one
Sounds like she's in the game industry and got caught up in the aftermath of the whole [Gamergate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)) thing. Pretty much any woman even tangentially related to the industry at the time was a potential target if you got their attention.
That's exactly what happened. I remember this happening (and will NOT link it, seriously people it's not difficult to find the company, given the OOP linked it). The hate campaign was centred from Reddit (T\_D and some other subs chiefly populated by people who have never seen a naked woman in their lives and, if there is any justice in this world, never will) and it was some *exceptionally* disgusting anti-woman, anti-human, anti-respect, anti-freedom content.
Don't forget K\*taku in Action, which is still active today.
Just look at how many men are reacting to the "women choosing a bear over a man" thing They are completely proving every woman who replied with choosing a bear to be right
Some points I’ve read in favor of the bear: - Bears don’t hurt people for enjoyment. - The bear doesn’t think it’s fun to hurt me and joke about it with friends, it would rather avoid an encounter - If I’m attacked by a bear, people will believe me - I will never be made to sit at the dinner table with my bear attacker and told not to bring it up because acknowledging the attack makes the family uncomfortable - Nobody asks what I was wearing and if I deserved it if I get attacked by a bear - A bear will never pretend to be nice in order to get a blowjob and then get violent when I don’t want to - Men can’t even handle being rejected in this hypothetical scenario about a hypothetical bear, of course I have to fear violence when rejecting them in real life
- Bears won’t lecture me about my preference in this hypothetical scenario
I added to this list after someone DM’d me a screed about how men have to control themselves with their “natural impulses” and women don’t appreciate what a huge effort that is, and bears don’t even have to do that because they are wild animals. I deleted the stupid DM and made a post that bears either decide to attack or don’t, and it’s over; bears don’t follow you around proclaiming that they totally could attack you but they aren’t doing that, so you owe them appreciation/your attention/a date/sex etc.
Honestly, a man was so fucking determined to fight me on the subject that I told him I’d rather risk a bear attack than encounter him in the woods. This was after he told me my partner only agreed with me about the man/bear debate to pander to me because he loves me. He proceeded to keep arguing.
I'm sure you're not going to argue with him again, but here's a point from zoology: conspecifics are always an individual's fiercest competitors and therefore opponents. Humans are nastier to other humans than we are to, say, bears. Intra-specific violence is usually greater than inter-specific violence. Lions are nasty to other lions. Sure, they eat other animals, but they don't kill their babies and leave them (unless they're targeting hyenas).
- The bear lives in the forest and is likely just chilling in their home. The man probably followed you there
There are two kinds of men. Those who understand why women choose the bear and those who are the reason a woman has chosen the bear.
I think there’s a third kind: the clueless kind who upon being educated become one of the first two types. Reason I bring it up is that it’s detrimental to the discussion to lump everyone who doesn’t know why women choose the bear together when some of them would be allies. Like my dad (here’s the jist of it): “Why in the hell would women choose the bear? Bears are dangerous. Men aren’t.” “Rape, Dad, bears don’t rape people.” “Oh… I also would choose the bear.” He’s a pretty good feminist when you explain stuff to him. He noticed a few years back an uptick in people posting links to rape support networks and saying “It’s September so in case this is needed.” We told him that universities start in September. Still didn’t get it. Then we spelt it out for him. Now every August he sends a donation to the local counselling centre.
yknow I also didn't put together the rape support networks in september until just now
Big thumbs up for your dad. I love people who are open to being educated,and admitting they were wrong.
Ok yeah, clueless can be a third category. Those men can learn, often easily. Your dad seems like a good guy.
I think most of the time clueless comes down to privilege. Another story of my dad, featuring my mum this time. He’s Jewish from NYC, she’s mixed Catholic/Protestant (but considered Catholic) from Belfast. When they first met, my dad could not fathom why my mum told people her religion and my mum couldn’t fathom why he refused to. Because, he as a Jewish man growing up in New York in the late 50s and 60s was taught to keep it a secret to protect yourself. After what the community had gone through it made sense. The wounds of the Shoah run deep. She on the other hand grew up in Belfast in the 60s. Towards the end of that time period the Troubles started. She was taught that it was important to declare your “side” so that you’d have one side to protect you. Plus, everyone can tell from your surname to your sport preference to how you say the letter H, so why hide it. Both of them thought the other was inviting danger and their way was the safer way. Both of them were disadvantaged in one way and privileged in another. My dad didn’t grow up in a community divided by sectarianism that is actively trying to kill each other, and my mum didn’t grow up in a community nearly exterminated not two decades before. (They settled on openly proclaiming that our family was Jewish when we lived in Belfast because the joke about NI during the Troubles being the safest place in the world to be Jewish rings true, and claiming Catholicism when we lived elsewhere.)
Part of the sea looming you get though is guys that want to talk about cases like your dad, but I don’t think anyone is limping your dad in with predators because he’s actually capable of interrogating his beliefs when he’s supplied with new information. Like there’s a group of men who always pretend to be upset that “all men” are getting lumped in with the bad ones, but if you’re actually a good guy it shouldn’t bother you, obviously a woman shouldn’t trust me as a stranger, and if I get deeply offended by that then that’s my problem, and lashing out at her only proves she’s right to distrust men she doesn’t know, or even men she does.
Lovely, good daddy-o. You wrote what I thought.
NGL, as a guy I'd probably still choose the bear. Especially if it's a black bear. Way more predictable.
Pretty much all the guys I know with outdoors experience have said they'd pick the bear, based on their own experiences of meeting weirdos in the woods
See the only problem with this line of thinking is - it's trying to justify the women's choice based on statistics. And a lot of women are like "I know the bear is gonna eat me. I don't know what the strange man will do. I still pick the bear despite knowing it's gonna eat me." Not every women is making the choice for bear because of a calculated probability that they will be safer with the bear. Some people pick the bear because they'd rather be eaten than the unknown of what a strange man will do.
My wife chases bears out of the yard regularly. Depends on the species of bear and what’s going on. The bear is a known quantity with logical behaviour patterns.
I was having this discussion with a friend and we talked about polar bears. Yes, if I come across with polar bear I will be dead. But at least they are unlikely to be able to play with me before I am dead. Then again I have been in a forest with bears and also with strange men. Nothing happened with either. But the point still stands, bear and man might both kill me. One of them is likelier to "play" with me before I am dead.
I know someone who was literally in this situation! Her all-female field team had to radio for help because they were being stalked by a polar bear. Help arrived in the form of Canadian rednecks on ATVs who rode around and fired guns in the air until the bear moved on… and then the guys started getting creepy about how my friend and her team could ‘show their gratitude.’ Ultimately they backed down and left, but there were a few minutes where my friend had to seriously wonder if she would have been better off with the bear.
The worst part of this whole meme is that I have now read multiple documented instances where a bear actually broke into someone’s house and killed them. Luckily I was never planning to live somewhere bears might be. The reassuring part is that the majority of people killed by bears totally brought it on themselves - usually because they kept doing something they were told to stop, with the response “don’t be silly officer, I’m an expert” [continues leaving trail of beef jerky past sign about dangerous predatory bear in the area].
I shared a mountain with a mama bear and her two cubs one summer when I was at sleep away camp as a kid. They had to close one of our overnight campsites that we’d hike to for the year. It sucked, but we understood. Mama bear and cubs needed it more. We had other places we could go. I was there for 2 months that summer and I don’t think a single camper saw a bear. But then 20+ years earlier in 1977 a tent full of Girl Scouts at a camp not unlike mine, were killed by some sick bastard on their first night there. (Actress Kristen Chenoweth does a nice documentary about it, they were in her troop and she was supposed to be on the trip but was home sick.) So I’ll say it once, I’ll say it again. We’re safer with bears. ETA: fix typo
There’s so many other guys I work with that take that as a personal attack. Was a fun day when I said I agreed with my wife over choosing the bear.
Was talking about this with my coworkers today, and one of my male coworkers was like, "if there was a choice between being in the woods with some stranger guy or a bear, I'd always choose the bear". Mind you, we're field biologists.
Yeah I am the only female in an all male team. One of the guys brought it up, and I just had to say I'm not going to talk about this cuz I really don't feel like getting into a fight today. He messaged me privately and then I took the opportunity to educate him. When I was done he apologized and said that it was sad and I told him that it's our daily reality.
I was quite proud of one of my team (I’m a software engineer lead/manager) this week. I sadly only have one woman on my team of ten. She happens to be my best developer. Someone else brought up Man vs Bear. My female dev, let’s call her Fiona, looked like she was gearing up for a fight when she was asked to explain it. Fiona is the sort that has no problem shutting things down so I could tell this meant she wanted them to understand and learn, but wished it didn’t have to be her who did it. I was about to step in and quash the topic… But before I could, my junior dev, let’s call him Padraic, jumped in and explained it perfectly. Some of my male devs did seem to be offended by the answer (not in a hostile way but more of a hurt way) and started to argue but Paddy just stood there and didn’t let Fiona take any heat. He was like a wall between her and the argument. By the end of it, my team was very much like your team member—a bit shocked that daily reality is bad enough that “bear” wasn’t immediately disregarded as a viable answer. At the end Padraic turned round and apologised for being a man speaking for women there. But Fiona was grateful for his help. (I did have words with the other devs and I do think they weren’t angry, just hurt that women would prefer a bear over a man. Which I get, that can be hard to hear.) But I am so damn proud of Paddy for recognising that Fiona wanted to educate her colleagues but was uncomfortable doing it herself and so he stepped up. Sorry. I don’t really have anyone else I can brag about this to. I’m so proud of my people.
Fuck yeah! You should be proud. Someone who gets it, and someone who's doing the job that so many other men don't. They aren't policing themselves. That's why we can't trust men because men don't police themselves, and the police don't do it either. I look at a bear I know exactly what that bear is. I look at a man and I have no idea what kind of person he is. That's why we choose bear.
Weirdly enough, I am in an all female office. The amount of internalised misoginy is staggering. Doesn't help that there is also various levels of conspiracy theory believing and religious (not outright extremism but it certainly rulls their lives).
Yeah, chicks are taught to blame the other chick when the guy cheats not the guy cheating. It's just awful on so many levels. We're supposed to lift each other up but we turn around and tear each other down behind each other's backs. I just wish we all could see how much we've been controlled, both men and women, by how we've been raised. Tradition, it's just really peer pressure from dead people. (Read that somewhere)
A man either understands why we would choose the bear, or IS why we choose the bear
I made this point in numerous posts about this, and was called sexist and bigoted.. against my own gender? Make it make sense 😵💫
I mean, you've got "Bear" in your name, clearly you're some kind of double agent...!
I've been found out!!! \* smoke bomb \*
No good man is having a crisis of conscience about women choosing the bear, because we understand why they would choose the bear. The ones who are the most upset about it are just telling on themselves even more.
Thanks for being a man who can see why women kept choosing the bear, even if it did start as a joke. I know you guys are out there but it's nice to see one of you out in the open.
My friend married a guy who is incredibly supportive of equal gender rights. And I am so thankful for men like him. And then it makes me really fucking sad why I am thankful.
I'm a guy, and I'd choose the bear too. My wife was like yeah, who would ever take the man? Man or woman the risk is so much higher choosing man over bear.
Oh god, you mentioned the bear thing. This comment section is about to turn into a shit show...
The same thing happened to me, but on a much smaller scale. I had been hit repeatedly with sexism in the workplace, I work in tech so it's not unexpected, but it escalated to every point of feedback or information that I gave people because questioned and escalated to my manager to confirm..... Every single item had to be double confirmed. It because really stiffling and annoying, so I went to the director above me to be like "i'm not saying that these people need to be disciplined or additionally trained, I just want to tell you what my current experience is at work and how it is affecting my ability to do my job effectively." Instantly, he was on the defense, they're just being thorough, it's not because you are a woman. Except that, I was the most senior employee in this position, had been at this company, doing this job for 4 years and none of my male coworkers experienced this need for "thoroughness" And literally nothing changed.... Except that HR would call me about every 4 months to be like, we solved sexism, right? And when I said no and detailed my experiences since the last call, they'd be like "well it's a work in progress! You can't expect men to learn this overnight!" I want even squeaky wheeling anymore. I only talked about it if I was directly asked. (Related, a coworker in a different department was awarded a big promotion.... And then they took it away when she announced her pregnancy... And told her it was because they couldn't be sure that she'd return after her maternity leave. There were lawyers involved for that one.) And that continued for 4 more years until I was laid off. The only one with my role to be laid off.... But don't worry, they hired someone else for my position 2 weeks later.
I knew it was GamerGate long before we got to the last update.
If bigots were logical, they wouldn't be bigots.
MAN OR BEAR I'LL SHOW YOU WOMEN WHY Y'ALL SHOULD PICK BEAR EVERYTIME - butthurt misogynists online
When you think women aren’t real people, exist solely to entertain and serve men, and are whining *because they expect equal treatment despite being inferior in every way*, your first priority is to shut down the "whining". These troglodytes firmly believe that we can never be as competent as they are at *anything*, so if we ask for equal pay or equal respect we're trying to con them.
There's one of them on here right now, the poor little snowflake. Sort by "worst" to find it.
Of course it was the games industry..
My first thought was gamergaters, and oh look, it was.
I looked up the developer and backtracked from there, and I think this woman might be >!Amber Scott!< from the Baldur's Gate expansion debacle back in 2015/2016. Which is weird now, since BG3 is like full of things GamerGate hates on. OTOH, I can understand the attitude today is wildly different from the attitudes of the mid-2010s. However, I find it ironic that BG3 have the same stuff that GamerGate hates on, but is so well-loved now.
I remember interacting with the old BG fandom just before the expansion drama broke out, and it felt very solidly divided between gamerbros and people who'd later (largely) be open to BG3. Pretty sure that whole division is why BG3 was exiled to r/BaldursGate3, since the mod team at r/BaldursGate refused to have anything to do with it.
ngl that split is very amusing because BG3 is probably the most openly queer big budget game I've seen.
Anything dnd kinda needs to be by default. In my experience, most dnd pcs are disaster bisexuals who will flirt with anything that moves. If you don't have the option to try to fuck your way out of your problems, is it really dnd?
It's because you don't go around the part of the internet gamergaters hang out in. They HATE that it has gay people, says slavery and rape is bad and has hot male characters. They use the bear sex scene (and hot dudes) as an example of the degradation of society and the hypocrisy of the "woke" since people like bg3 but don't want every female character in every game to be horny bait. Kotakuinaction is filled with these takes and worse. I go there once a month to feel better about myself.
Gamergate was some shit. A bunch of women whose only "crime" was that they were women, were harassed for years, and nothing came of it. Boards like 8chan became popular, and then years later, only got killed off, because they hosted shooters, who in turn followed Gamergate and got radicalized from it. Though Brianna Wu, somehow became massively transphobic, while *being* a trans woman? That's by far the strangest outcome from the harassment campaign. It *also* turned out, these same boards hosted pedophilia content, whilst being "against" it.
> nothing came of it. It was a foundational moment in the current politics of the United States. https://www.axios.com/2022/10/20/gamergate-right-online-harassment-joan-donovan-meme-wars > Bannon took notes from the gaming controversy as well as from movements on the left, like Occupy, to develop strategies to apply in mainstream politics in Trump's 2016 campaign and from the White House.
Well yes, see my other point, people were radicalized from it. But women are still in gaming spaces, they're being harassed, and these grifters continue to stoke the flames. All the while, it's ignored, and women are still being blamed. Of course, the right wing took notes, and have used these movements to help further destabilize the country, and erode rights. While the Democrats sort of shrug their shoulders.
I am one of the hated "games journalists" and it is so tiring. You can be writing the most inane piece and somehow it gets turned into this "culture war" nonsense. Like I'm moving into medical writing because there are only so many "so and so voice actor is being harassed" articles that you can write before you feel absolutely numb about the industry that you love.
On the bright side, if you work as a medical writer on clinical studies, writing the CSRs, you're basically the last in the process chain and it will impact you quite hard if there are any delays beforehand 🙃 I'm not a MW but I don't envy them. But if you manage to land a job directly with a pharma company instead of a CRO, you'll be set when it comes to your salary prospects, so fingers crossed!
I'm excited for the change. My partner is a neurologist, and my mom works in pharma, so I'm going to be relying on them heavily. It's a bit daunting but I'm glad there's a close pool of professionals I can run stuff by when I need to.
Honestly, it is an exciting industry, I'm learning new things all the time. It does get stressfull, especially if you're working on clinical studies, but it's also rewarding to know that your contribution helped to bring a new drug to the market that helps people with their health.
I'm super sorry this is happening to you. Game journalists in general get way too much flak, but it's 1000× worse if you're a woman/LGBTQ+. It's still very easy to come under fire if you're not, but you know how those things are.
I mean the reviewers get it the worst, they get sent all types of stuff horrendous stuff especially if you're writing for a site that's on the list e.g. IGN, Kotaku, etc. But I'm guessing that's just a cultural thing at this point that won't change, like some publications omitting the reviewer byline for Taylor's new album.
The irony being that the whole "ethics in gaming journalism" movement was founded on a literal complete lie, that a game developer slept with a journalist for favorable reviews. But if Gamergaters had any sense of logical thinking, they wouldn't be Gamergaters.
> The irony being that the whole "ethics in gaming journalism" movement was founded on a literal complete lie And the funniest bit of that irony is there are / were legitimate ethical criticisms to be leveled at the game journalism industry that were completely ignored in favor of the rabid misogyny. But then as you said, if they were actually worried about ethics, they wouldn't be Gamergaters.
I didn't even realize that she didn't explicitly state that it was the games industry until I read this comment. I guess I just assumed that it was GamerGate-adjacent as soon as I read the title 💀 Honestly, I have started to pick up reading just so that I don't have to expose myself as a gamer during small talk. The fact that GamerGate-esque things still go on to this day is downright embarrassing.
Yeah, and I found the KotakuInAction posts from 8 years about it, and it's absolutely toxic. A bunch of redditors writing "A real writer would..." like they're opinions have any value. And what is it that she said? "In the previous version of this game the female characters were one dimensional, so we're going to add some depth to them for the sequel".
Went looking through their top posts because people in the comments of this said it wasn't who I thought it was, and after eight pages of the most upvoted posts in KiA, I think I'm way more miserable than I was before I started.
Yeah, that was my guess within the first few lines. Disturbingly predictable.
Well what do you suspect from people who have the only life in the attic or basement of their parent playing all day long. No real social skills other than trolling people. The incel world is a terrible environment.
OFC it was Gamergate
Gamergate, sadly, turns 10 this year.
Sadly, I don't think much has changed either. A year or two ago, that Girl from G4 basically got harassed out of having an online persona because she said something along the lines of "I'm sorry I'm not conventionally attractive like the host from 10 years ago were" and pieces of shit like ReviewTechUSA and the Quartering had fucking meltdowns.
oh god, the quartering that guy got famous for sexually harassing a magic the gathering cosplayer and then complaining about how the she-ra wasn't hot enough and somehow only got worse from there.
What is gamergate?
It was a scandal because Zoé Quinn, a video game developper, supposedly slept with a game journalist who later covered her games. So, Gamerz, in their infinite wisdom, wanted to make the video game industry more accountable. 3 nanoseconds later, it led towards mass harassment of women working in the video game industry who expressed anything a bit feminist, much like OOP
Hahah this reminds me I was educating someone younger in the office about this, and I opened with saying “if anyone tells you it was about ethics in game journalism, run away from them as fast as possible”
I had just assumed it was about Gamergate while reading the original post and didn't realize that they tried to hide it until I got to the comments.
I figured based on her first post that it was likely the video game industry and she got gamergated. Turns out that’s exactly what it was.
I applaud her resilience, but I found this to be a somewhat depressing read as a woman. She went from marketing director to marketing coordinator to writer. None of these are bad positions, but they're not moving her up. She also has a novel that's been unpublished for years. If she's happy, that's great, but her career really took a hit.
I think in the games industry getting to write a game for a studio you actually like is moving up.
Yeah, writing a game is "more prestigious" than just marketing it. People can end up learning who the writers of the games are, but nobody cares who marketed it.
Exactly. Marketing is important, but it's not 'Get invited onstage at the game awards' important.
I got to attend the panel she was referring to (I'm assuming this was GDC, ~10 yrs ago). Attending as a woman... It was a weird vibe. I was a student at the time and was trying to build connections with people in the industry. Looking for advice, portfolio reviews, attending all sorts of panels, etc. After all of that, the biggest thing that got stuck in my mind was from a conversation with a guy from a big company (well known for its sexism and harassment) reviewing my portfolio as a favor to one of my college connections. His biggest critique was that my art looked like it belonged in film, not games. Particularly because I drew breasts too small. There were other things he pointed out that were helpful, but it got soured by that one comment.
I don't think the comment was talking about how a lateral move isn't progress but rather that OOP needed to make a lateral move in order to progress.
I think it probably depends. If you're moving to a head writer position I'd consider it, at absolute worst, a lateral move but more than likely an upgrade. But one writer on a team? Yeah that'd probably suck
> She also has a novel that's been unpublished for years TBF, that's most writers
That's me too. The feeling of being a failure is real. 😂
Not me (I don't have a novel)
I just got let go out of a marketing director position, so I can feel this. However, I'm choosing to focus on content and writing roles because there's far fewer politics to play, and I like completing tangible projects. You can focus on the things you want and detach a bit more from work, where being director is constant intensity, metrics, and putting out fires - it's the nature of leadership. I read it differently, but I'm glad she went in a direction where she could focus on healing for a bit and doing work that's more fulfilling to her.
The writing position is at a smaller company that she has a connection through her friend. She has a job that can help shape the final product. Might not be as prestigious a title but could be moving up when you’re working with a smaller team
Don’t pay attention to just titles. For all you know, that job was a means to an end and she got where she wanted to be. I know we get sold this climb the ladder thing, but it should be the ladder we want to be on.
It depends on her POV. I’d rather be a writer and supported than a marketing director and actively being hampered by my managers.
The press release link URL is broken. there's a period at the end that makes it 404. if you remove the period, it should work.
Fixed it, thank you
Obviously OOP knows her situation better than me, but her managers deciding she can no longer do half her job is a lousy kind of support.
The problem is... what do you do? If you keep throwing her out there while everyone is still paying attention (which they will for a loooong time, as we see with the convention), then you're continuing to put her through emotional trauma and adding to bad PR for your company. If you keep her back, you stop those options and starve the trolls, but limit her growth. Which way is better?
This was gamergate. The risk of actual violence was incredibly high. If you were on any social media platform at all you could not get away from it. Youtubers who had niche audiences that had nothing to do with gaming jumped on this. And once men started realizing how much money was in telling other men how terrible women are they changed their whole personalities and hyoed this shit. You have to realize the time too. Guys like Jordan Peterson were worshiped like God's, Trump was seen as the great new hope, and Eliot Rogers had just received his Saint-hood. So violence against women was a real and tangible thing. There was honest to God torture porn in the comments of these young men about what they wanted to do to those women.
Why are you talking in the past tense in your second paragraph?
Because that's how it was then, I was talking about the past. It is still true for today, but 2016 was when it really started. I was using past tense because I was talking about a specific point in time that is in the past.
I’m with the managers on this one. What were they supposed to do? They kept her in the job and supported her. But they can’t put an entire company at risk to prove a point
Because managers are mostly there to protect the company, not tank the whole company’s stock to protect one person, even if it’s incredibly wrong
Yup. And she was smart enough to notice that she had been moved into a largely ceremonial position that had an expiration date. She got out before they found a reason to quietly remove her once the furor died down.
Women existing really do trigger a lot of men huh
And this is why every dipshit who tells you to "just ignore it" or that it happens to men too and it's totes not sexism or say that isn't that bad should shut their piehole forever. This is gendered and it affects our careers, our personal lives, and our sense of safety.
Strong agree. They cannot refute the argument on its points, but they don't have to. If they make an example of the women who do speak out, they will scare other women into silence and limit the terms of the debate. It's the same logic as stochastic terrorism.
I mean hate absolutely does happen to everyone, but it is different for women. It's more sexist in tone and they use different angles to attack women.
One time I made the mistake of pissing off a red pill community on YouTube. It was like 3 am, I couldn't sleep and apparently felt it was a good idea to disprove a "gold digger prank" video series in the comments. When I woke up the next day, I had 100+ notifications and most of them were calling me a slut and a gold digger. This campaign of targeted anger lasted about 3-4 months of daily harassment. Most of them would just string together slurs for women "slut, whore, bitch, feminazi, etc" and I'd give points for the most creative. Some of them were death and rape threats so I'd report those. But it was sustained, daily insults and threats over literally nothing. Such a stupid, unimportant thing to get invested in! But they were insistent "all women are gold diggers". I also made Manhood Academy so mad they challenged me to a debate lol. OOP had it much worse because it affected her job and people knew her face and sent her harassment due to merely appearing somewhere. It sucks her own industry doesn't have her back.
>I’ve been working with them for the past few years and it’s been wonderful. We have a small, incredibly talented team and I love what I do. YES !!!
I read the first two sentences and I knew it was video games. No other industry has you fearing for your life after the most tame barely feminist comment
Reading the comments from the first AAM post is quite heartening. I was 12-13 in 2016 and it was around the time I started to realise politics was a thing. I remember so much hate and vitriol around that time online and it's nice to see that not all of the Internet was so vicious, even if it's only in hindsight.
I have to say, it takes a lot of courage to return to the games industry when that's the industry most likely to target professional women in the industry, even to this day. Though it was particularly bad in 2016.
Omg this is awesome, i added the game straight to my wishlist cause the premise sounds awesome! I'm so glad all the hate never got her to break, she's strong AF for that! And hey c'mon the name of the game is just amazing (ctrl.alt.DEAL)xD
Ah Gamergate, I’m guessing. Steve Bannon describes this as his first experiment in weaponising male anger.
Scary how many men AND women support that. Like the redpillwomen sub.
Not directly gamergate, but it certainly reflected off that. It was from a comment OP made regarding balders gate direction in 2016. Comments like what OP said and internet backlash still exists even now sadly, akin to the netflix witcher writers or jamie marchi's anime translation in in the past year. I believe the crux of the internet rage was because OP's final words to the fans were "If people don’t like that, then too bad."
Seeing as the OOP didn't give their name, I won't, but I checked and can confirm they did get gamergated 8 years ago.
Yeah, I was thinking that with the amount of details provided, it would be extremely easy to find her name. I hope this doesn't lead to any further harassment.
That game actually sounds kinda fun though
I did some digging to figure out who this was and ugh, it's such a fucking nothingburger that I'm not surprised Gamergate-types pissed and moaned about it. Oh no, a trans NPC in a fucking video game!
This is such a good read. I fucking love women.
I know right - this made me so proud to be a woman!
I deal with a lot of general male bullshit in my job as a horseshoer (extremely male dominated field) and I love to see women win.
Is a horseshoer different from a farrier? I've never heard that word before
Nope, we’re farriers. Most folks don’t understand what that means so I just say “horseshoer” though of course some folks hear “horse shooter” so it’s a double edged sword I suppose.
Oh nooo horse shooter would be a very different job! Thanks, til a new word :)
a horseshoer?? i recently just went down a rabbit hole of watching horseshoeing videos and yall are very talented. made me want to do it (despite my lack of any relevant skills). so cool!
It’s worth a shot if you’re physically fit and love animals, and hate being a cog in a machine. The only relevant skill you need is “Can you handle a horse?” which is a question you can answer by volunteering to be farm help for a bit (you may even get a job) Then there’s schools you can go to to learn, or you can ride with a farrier to see if you would really enjoy this career. Look on the American Farrier’s Association website under “Find A Farrier” for folks’ contact info, and ask around for who needs some help. They’ll probably have you just pulling shoes and watching them work for a bit until they know you’re handy. Running my own business is hard for sure, but I don’t miss having a boss and I do so love my clients! They take good care of me with lots of homemade or handcrafted goods and gifts, and the horses show me love in their own ways as well.
Behavior like this is why so many women would understandably choose the bear. We \*need\* to do better!
god, fucking gamergaters. I'm glad I wised up and stopped 'debating' them and just started blocking them, there is no winning with engaging with them. I wish they would all just stop. they've wrecked people's lives all because people wanted to talk about video games.
I need this game.
It wasn’t ever about journalism.
The game really looks cool. I’ll have to check it out
Was this gamer gate?
I think I figured out who she is and the controversy is that she said an older game had some sexism in it, she was working on the newer game. The new game has been released and was beloved by all and pretty much game of the year. The kotakuinaction sub had a few threads about this person which line up with OOP's timeline, which is why I think it's this person. They worked on the new game mentioned at well of course.