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Today I unlocked an acheivement!

 

LCwIvzV.png

 

So, uh, yay?

 

So RSA is off to its normal shitty start, then?

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I feel like you should take this public, subbes, but it's up to you. We're here for you.

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I feel like you should take this public, subbes, but it's up to you. We're here for you.

 

We're here for you!  We believe in you!  Hooray for youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!

 

But seriously, we totally are.

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OK, here's what happened.  It was not physical sexual harrassment, but it was inappropriate, it was sexual, and it creeped me out.

 

A little background:  I am fat.  Last night I was even wearing a necklace that said "FAT," because fuck the haters who would try to use something like that against me.  

 

I was at one of the RSA kickoff parties hosted by a vendor.  It was at the St. Regis, on the roof.  There was a lot of booze around.  I wasn't drinking, because I needed to drive home.

 

We - I, my boss, and a colleague - were standing near one of the bars.  I had my back to the bar.  I turned around to step away from the conversation and 'circulate,' as one does at these parties.  

 

There was a very drunk guy wearing a WebSense polo making his way away from the bar.  He almost bumped into me, then, staring directly at my chest, said something sexual about my size or the size of my breasts.  

 

I couldn't make out exactly what he said - or, if I could make it out, I instantly forgot it as a defense mechanism.  I've asked my colleagues if they could make out what he said, but they couldn't, either.  Based on what I heard and what I can remember, it was one of those "more of you to play with" comments.  Where play means something sexual, because it always does.  His tone was clearly creepy/sleazy, and my colleagues corroborate this.

 

I immediately steped back and turned away.  I did not make a fuss, though in retrospect I wish I had at least asked him to repeat what he said so I could be properly offended.  My reaction was instinctual ("escape this weird situation") rather than reasoned ("confront this sleazebag").

 

Because he was very drunk, because none of us could make out/remember what he said, and because I didn't confront him at the time, I am not willing to take it public any further than bitching about it on this message board.  That sucks, because I've previously been vocal about how these things need to be public in order to provide evidence that This Is A Problem.

 

 

 

I may, if I see this WebSense guy on the Expo floor, ask him what he remembers from the party with a view to telling him he did something that was Not Okay and getting an apology from him.  It is just as likely that I will instead Not Make A Fuss.

 

 

I thought the one benefit to being fat was that I wouldn't get any unasked-for sexual comments (instead exchanging those for comments about my "health" that are just code for "lol fatty").  

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Is it fair to assume that Websense hires through college fraternity-ties? Nope, but I'm doing it anyway.

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He went to all the bother of putting on his good clean polo and you turned him down? You just know he is LiveJournaling about this right now.

 

 

Edit: Also super lamo. Hope you are feeling ok after it!

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Sorry subbes, I kind of barged in with my Harold Ramis post without reading yours. Seems like a crappy situation - if you confronted him he would likely play the 'it was the drink talking' card. Which translates as 'I'm a twat when I drink'. Which translates as 'I'm a twat'.

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I figured it would happen sooner or later;  it was a surprise that it took a whole year before it did.

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That sounds shitty, although it does seem like a situation that could happen in virtually any alcohol-fuelled environment. I've had comments that are more than a little suggestive thrown at me in various bars over the years, not to mention uninvited dancing/attempted grinding by people who actively repel me. Not that I'm excusing such behaviour and I really hope that I won't be labelled as part of the problem for even suggesting this, but is this a problem with the games industry — as opposed to just Western society in general?

 

Do you go out to many non-industry occasions where alcohol and strangers are everywhere subbes? If so, I'd be interested to hear whether or not you encounter similar behaviour there. This then poses an interesting question: when is it appropriate to go up to strangers that you find attractive and be suggestive, try to get close to them, etc? If nobody ever did it then we'd all be dying alone, so there's a line here somewhere that a lot of people are clearly not getting right.

 

Of course, this doesn't have any relevance to day-to-day sexual harassment in the workplace. I don't know the scope of that problem in the games industry or indeed any other industry for that matter, including my own (web app development). It's a much dicier area, but then my current colleague courted and is now marrying a girl he worked with. How often is perceived sexual harassment flirting that was taken the wrong way, I wonder?

 

In any case, people should be held accountable when they do overstep the boundaries. If you feel safe doing so, confronting him about it might bring you some closure. If this whole line of discussion is something you find deeply distasteful then I'll drop it, it just got me thinking about all this really.

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I met my wife by drunkenly bumping into her at a work-party and explaining that her ta-ta's would look great on my chin.

Not really.

Actually Thrik, this is one of the reasons that I like the american version of The Office, because it explores these complexities in a considerate and entertaining way.

Edit: damnit, I'm having a really hard time figuring out the best place to put that apostrophe on "ta-ta?s"

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That sounds shitty, although it does seem like a situation that could happen in virtually any alcohol-fuelled environment. I've had comments that are more than a little suggestive thrown at me in various bars over the years, not to mention uninvited dancing/attempted grinding by people who actively repel me. Not that I'm excusing such behaviour and I really hope that I won't be labelled as part of the problem for even suggesting this, but is this a problem with the games industry — as opposed to just Western society in general?

 

Do you go out to many non-industry occasions where alcohol and strangers are everywhere subbes? If so, I'd be interested to hear whether or not you encounter similar behaviour there. This then poses an interesting question: when is it appropriate to go up to strangers that you find attractive and be suggestive, try to get close to them, etc? If nobody ever did it then we'd all be dying alone, so there's a line here somewhere that a lot of people are clearly not getting right.

 

Of course, this doesn't have any relevance to day-to-day sexual harassment in the workplace. I don't know the scope of that problem in the games industry or indeed any other industry for that matter, including my own (web app development). It's a much dicier area, but then my current colleague courted and is now marrying a girl he worked with. How often is perceived sexual harassment flirting that was taken the wrong way, I wonder?

 

In any case, people should be held accountable when they do overstep the boundaries. If you feel safe doing so, confronting him about it might bring you some closure. If this whole line of discussion is something you find deeply distasteful then I'll drop it, it just got me thinking about all this really.

 

There's really not that fine of a line between flirting, expressing interest and being sexually harassing.  You can easily do the first two without the third being involved.  Unless you're trying to describe sexually charged banter, which is something that you earn the privilege of engaging in with another person.  It doesn't come by default.

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Although of course this could and would happen anywhere that you put lots of people in a space with lots of free booze, I guess the question as relating to the games industry is about the reaction to the reporting of it: if it happened at an event within a different industry would the same oppressive, aggressive reaction or atmosphere exist?

 

If the answer is yes, then of course that doesn't mean that it's not shitty and that we shouldn't try to eradicate it. But I would say the answer is probably "not to the same extent" because of the nature of the games industry - an unusually large portion of the industry culture is massively public and online, and thereby pretty awful in general - and because of the start-up, temporary nature of many companies which means they do not have an established HR department and ingrained policies on this stuff.

 

 

Sorry if this is a rambly, obvious Sexual Harassment 101 post.

 

 

EDIT: thinking about this more. I realise that the things I (and many others, obv, I'm not trailblazing here) am saying about the games industry's reaction to this stuff can also be appllied to society in general. So I guess the problem is that the games industry is structured in such a way that even the modicum of counter-balance against misogynist shit that some industries have managed is not present. It's also more disappointing and troubling because it reflects badly on and bodes badly for the next generation, the attitudes of which the gaming industry's inner-workings are uniquely entwined with. I once naively hoped that the teenagers of today would be a lot less mindlessly hateful; perhaps if we alter the dialogue of this industry it will more significantly alter that of an entire generation than any other previously could...

 

2ND EDIT: To sum up, wherever else it goes, people like Subbes telling communities like us this stuff, and us saying "that is unacceptable" loudly and repeatedly will hopefully contribute to setting the tone for our successors.

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o you go out to many non-industry occasions where alcohol and strangers are everywhere subbes? If so, I'd be interested to hear whether or not you encounter similar behaviour there. This then poses an interesting question: when is it appropriate to go up to strangers that you find attractive and be suggestive, try to get close to them, etc? If nobody ever did it then we'd all be dying alone, so there's a line here somewhere that a lot of people are clearly not getting right.

 

This being an «industry event,» which I'm interpreting as something directly work-related (also, since a boss is there), it sounds like a place where nobody should be trying to find out where any «lines» go, though serving alcohol does in a way go a little counter to that, as there's bound to be people who can't handle it. Of course, the kind of comment she got doesn't really fall anywhere on the flirting/suggestive spectrum, just somewhere on the asshole one.

 

Also, obviously nobody should feel like they're obligated to stand up for «the cause» or confront someone about stuff like this for anything but personal reasons.

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woke up today to someone mocking my (obvs legit) claim to be running a game dev company on facebook. turns out it's one of my tutors from when i was in RMIT university's game dev course for a semester and a half. known to me mainly for trying to be my friend because I knew Gabe Newell, then turning weirdly hostile and marking me down on an assignment and accusing me of plagiarism, and then after I left I saw him ecstatically praising himself for getting on Kotaku for harassing Bioware's Jennifer Hepler. so basically my twitter is hilarious today and I've had a fun morning.

 

it also turns out he hasn't been fired from that uni somehow

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Of course, this doesn't have any relevance to day-to-day sexual harassment in the workplace. I don't know the scope of that problem in the games industry or indeed any other industry for that matter, including my own (web app development). It's a much dicier area, but then my current colleague courted and is now marrying a girl he worked with. How often is perceived sexual harassment flirting that was taken the wrong way, I wonder?

i feel like it's almost impossible for that to happen. if someone's attempts at flirtation are taken as sexual harassment, they are definitely flirting wrong. 

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woke up today to someone mocking my (obvs legit) claim to be running a game dev company on facebook. turns out it's one of my tutors from when i was in RMIT university's game dev course for a semester and a half. known to me mainly for trying to be my friend because I knew Gabe Newell, then turning weirdly hostile and marking me down on an assignment and accusing me of plagiarism, and then after I left I saw him ecstatically praising himself for getting on Kotaku for harassing Bioware's Jennifer Hepler. so basically my twitter is hilarious today and I've had a fun morning.

 

it also turns out he hasn't been fired from that uni somehow

 

Good lord, I just found that Kotaku article.  That's a story I missed when it happened.  I hate gamers some days.

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I saw this http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/09/22/things-only-introverts-will-understand-japan-edition/ and laughed or cried because pretty much all of those quotes apply to me, with the caveat that over the past 10 years I've worked to get out of that mindset. I mostly fail, but I definitely try a lot more than I used to. And mostly fail...

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It was tough to read, because it was filled with horrible clichés based on misinformation about what introversion is. Introversion has nothing to do with shyness. Nothing. It is NOT a social disorder. I'm introverted and not awkward at all, perfectly fine with social interactions, picking up the telephone, etc.

I do get exhausted easily in large crowds and don't like parties and loudness - introversion's linked to sensitivity to external stimulation. We get drained easily by crowded places and events, but that doesn't mean we automatically fear them. Social anxiety has nothing to do with it, it's a different thing. Crap articles like this perpetuate these annoying falsehoods by continuing to spread the notion that introversion is a disability and introverts are a broken people.

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Yeah okay I also know that's not what introversion actually is. That doesn't change the fact that I deal with thoughts like that on a daily basis, and that was the real point. Congratulations, you don't deal with that! I'm happy for you.

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woke up today to someone mocking my (obvs legit) claim to be running a game dev company on facebook. turns out it's one of my tutors from when i was in RMIT university's game dev course for a semester and a half. known to me mainly for trying to be my friend because I knew Gabe Newell, then turning weirdly hostile and marking me down on an assignment and accusing me of plagiarism, and then after I left I saw him ecstatically praising himself for getting on Kotaku for harassing Bioware's Jennifer Hepler. so basically my twitter is hilarious today and I've had a fun morning.

 

it also turns out he hasn't been fired from that uni somehow

 

Classy! He sounds like a truly pathetic man. I bet it's just as difficult to get fired from a university job in the Netherlands as it is in the UK.

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Yeah okay I also know that's not what introversion actually is. That doesn't change the fact that I deal with thoughts like that on a daily basis, and that was the real point. Congratulations, you don't deal with that! I'm happy for you.

 

Maybe don't defend the article that emotionally manipulated you so strongly. It was shitty, and at best confuses a healthy mindset with a possibly serious disorder.

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