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Roderick

Feminism

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Would a union have saved her job? I guess in that scenario, we're assuming that a significant part of Nintendo America has unionized and is capable of exerting its collective weight to protect an individual.

That seems like a good goal to have and I support something like that. I still think it's sending the wrong message to post positive press for Nintendo a day after they fired someone. How do you expect anyone at Nintendo to form a union after seeing how quickly the Allison Rapp issue has been forgotten. Boycotting isn't always about hurting a company's bottom-line.

That's cool Apple Cider that you went to union rallies in WI. But how does that help a huge group of people form a union where Rapp was? I'm not saying you did something wrong, just pointing out that some people might want to feel like they're having a more direct effect on a specific situation, rather than generally supporting unions in a completely different state, for a completely different industry. That's why boycotting is such a powerful tool.

Sorry to harp on this! My biggest point honestly is seeing all the Mii pictures online. I wish we all (and I'm completely guilty of this) were smarter about denying big corporations free marketing.

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I brought it up merely as an example.

 

Basically, in general, unions won't solve everything, a shift towards better labor practises would be a good step in the gaming industry. As others have said, Nintendo should have ideally shielded their employees better re: harassment, but it sounds like, if Alison is to be believed, that they've been quietly been moving her away from the public for a number of reasons. Which is something a company is allowed to do and I'm not sure if it's a fair thing. The firing due to moonlighting reason seems to point more towards something they found culturally (as in corporate culture) repulsive, which is also weird, but also might not have been something they found out due to the harassment. 

 

However, none of this seems to be happening to men in general so it feels like the two problems with both Nintendo's corporate culture and game companies not protecting employees. 

 

Do I wish huge swarms of people were not posting Miitomo pics? Yeah, maybe? On the other hand, I don't go to Chick-fil-A and they seem to still have millions of restaurants. The downside to why I think boycotting is overall sort of useless is because a) the system is rigged for it to not hurt the right people B) individual actions amount to very little in the face of large corporations 

 

Is it really frustrating to see this sort of thing play out? Absolutely and that's something I get. But we need a lot of people to be on the same page here in order to get Nintendo or any gaming company to actually care about all of their employees in that way. Same with getting companies to protect their employees regarding big harassment groups. 

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Well in those cases the injury would have occurred under the supervision of the employer, or at least within their purview.  This is more akin to say a nurse at an abortion clinic being threatened while shopping for groceries, which is something that would be handled by law enforcement, though in this case the law enforcement apparatus isn't really equipped to handle this kind of situaiton.  If the harassment was aimed at a Nintendo run twitter account, or something directly under the purview of Nintendo I could see their interest in covering that liability.  I'm not suggesting it's her responsibility to deal with the harassment alone, it was more in reading a lot of the responses to this situation people have been casting the blame on Nintendo for doing something shitty, but from my understanding they were caught between a hate mob and the potential of exposing themselves to potentially serious consequences by taking a more active role in the situation.

 

Again, there, we're talking about a difference in scale.  One person accosting an employee versus a group of people harassing an employee and digging into their past and background as part of a sustained campaign are different scales of problem.  I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an employee to shrug off one shitbag yelling at them, but it is reasonable to provide assistance when they've got a dozen shitbags waiting to yell at them every single time they go grocery shopping, when those shitbags are there because of that person's employment.

 

Abortion is a really good example of the extra costs an employer has to take on for their employees safety due to unique circumstances.  I've volunteered at the local offices for Planned Parenthood.  They've got an armed guard and a security system that far exceed what any medical clinic should need, but because it's PP, they exist in a unique circumstance.  Part of my volunteer training included how to handle protestors at the location and guidance on how to de-escalate or disengage a conversation that felt like it was getting too heated (I've done outreach and phone banking for them).  They do provide in house resources to their employees to deal with off-site and personal time risks, because they acknowledge that in this time and place, the choice to work for PP is one that infuriatingly comes with real risk. 

 

Since the rise of gg, I think a lot of game companies are now facing an environment where a certain percentage of their workers are also facing new and unique risks from online mobs.  I think those companies need to find ways to support employees who find themselves in that situation.  The ideas I rattled off earlier were just things off the top of my head that a company could do.  I'm sure there are other things that could be done with a range of costs in terms of time and money.  Based on a quick google, Nintendo spends several hundred million, up to a half a billion, in PR, advertising and marketing per year.  Somehow I think a company that can spend up to a half a billion on marketing can find a few resources in that pool to develop a strategy to help employees who are, mostly, facing a communications problem. 

 

 

Also, I think that employees also do bear some responsibility.  I think that people should, and that this should probably be corporate policy, maintain as much separation between personal and business accounts as possible.  But we've already got an expected culture on Twitter where that divide doesn't exist.  Many publicly facing employees interact with the public through their personal accounts.  And I'm not sure how you fix that, because an employee should have the right and freedom to have a public twitter account, but with that comes the reality that customers, fans or haters will have access to it, and there's not always a way to know if the person you're interacting with is in any of those camps, or a friend of a friend, or just some rando who found something you had to say interesting. 

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Actually this event just highlights some weird double standard that's been bothering me since Sacco-Biddle business, and kinda facinating to see 180 on some of the views because the word GG is involved.

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I think what happened to Sacco was a fucking travesty and everyone involved or who contributed should be fucking ashamed of themselves.  In a just world, Biddle would have been made to pay for turning a magnifying glass on a single random person just for the lulz and clicks.

 

That said, what happened to her was unrelated to her job.  None of my points regarding what an employer should be doing would apply to her.

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I think what happened to Sacco was a fucking travesty and everyone involved or who contributed should be fucking ashamed of themselves.  In a just world, Biddle would have been made to pay for turning a magnifying glass on a single random person just for the lulz and clicks.

 

That said, what happened to her was unrelated to her job.  None of my points regarding what an employer should be doing would apply to her.

 

Yeah I agree and it wasn't at all directed at your position in regards to employer responsibilities, even if I lean more towards itsamoose' thoughts it's more of difference in technical issues (arguing over practicality).

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Yeah I agree and it wasn't at all directed at your position in regards to employer responsibilities, even if I lean more towards itsamoose' thoughts it's more of difference in technical issues (arguing over practicality).

Who/what was it directed at?

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Not a very substantive post, but a comment on We Hunted the Mammoth, about a spokesman for one of Harvard's "final clubs" defending their all-male membership by implying that female members would be in danger of getting raped, gave me a small revelation about feminism and rape culture. I was going to rephrase the comment, but I'll just leave Policy of Madness' words as they are:

 

Y'all are missing the point. It's not that Charles Storey actually thinks this. It's not like keeping women out of the club is actually preventing rape, because it’s not like these "gentlemen" have no access to women outside the club. I'm sure Storey understands this perfectly.

 

No, he just wants to keep women away from the networking functions that these kinds of clubs provide. I'm sure he knows, at a subconscious if not conscious level, that people devalue anything when women are involved in it regardless of whether that makes any sense, and he wants to keep the value of his club high.

 

What's outrageous is not that he thinks his club-mates are rapey (which, who knows if they are or not). What's outrageous is that he thinks that "Hey, my club-mates are rapey" is a more acceptable excuse for the exclusion than "Hey, we just don't want women to have the same advantages we do."

 

He thinks that claiming his club is full of rapists-waiting-to-happen is a better thing to say than explaining that he thinks the presence of women will devalue his club.

 

That is how acceptable rape is in our society. That is rape culture right there. "Don't get girls near us because we might rape them" is something this dude thought it was fine to say and that there would be no repercussions for it. Because there probably won't be. Because women who are raped in college are told they should have known better than to be in a room with a rapist.

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I was reminded today about how much this thread helped me develop my personal poltics. 

I'm hoping to create something similar for others, but I'm concerned it will go awry.

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I remember finding this thread helpful around the time gamergate hit. So much of the internet was (and still is) angry yelling about feminists, and this thread was not only a counterpoint to that, but one the consisted of more than just angry yelling in the other direction. Like, I had always kind of passively thought the angry internet anti-feminists were kind of ridiculous, but I never really engaged with it or really thought about the subject much, and this thread encouraged me to thing more critically about it. 

 

That said, as time went on, this and especially the now locked gamergate thread, became dumping grounds for "look at this outrageous thing the internet did today" and got increasingly angry. 

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32 minutes ago, Cleinhun said:

I remember finding this thread helpful around the time gamergate hit. So much of the internet was (and still is) angry yelling about feminists, and this thread was not only a counterpoint to that, but one the consisted of more than just angry yelling in the other direction. Like, I had always kind of passively thought the angry internet anti-feminists were kind of ridiculous, but I never really engaged with it or really thought about the subject much, and this thread encouraged me to thing more critically about it. 

 

That said, as time went on, this and especially the now locked gamergate thread, became dumping grounds for "look at this outrageous thing the internet did today" and got increasingly angry. 

 

I think there was an issue where August Never Ends, but the way that forums are built means that you either make a conscious choice not to read a given thread or you make the unconscious choice to keep checking in, that encouraged unhealthy levels of engagement and emotion in this thread. I wonder if it would be different now that we've been living in a post-GamerGate world for over two and a half years, or if the fact that we live in a post-Trump world means that it'd be even worse.

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I'm trying to enforce a safe-space in a Discord channel and the typical assumptions about how people choose to be offended and "censorship" are coming up. 

I'm not really sure what the balance of consideration is between the users who are willing to engage on those issues in that particular place. I'm concerned that such a discussion may make that channel more hostile feeling for the folks I would hope to make space for. 

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4 minutes ago, clyde said:

I'm trying to enforce a safe-space in a Discord channel and the typical assumptions about how people choose to be offended and "censorship" are coming up. 

I'm not really sure what the balance of consideration is between the users who are willing to engage on those issues in that particular place. I'm concerned that such a discussion may make that channel more hostile feeling for the folks I would hope to make space for. 

 

Even in spaces where trolling and abuse are discouraged, it seems like people are desperately afraid of not being taken in good faith, often while assuming a lack of good faith in others. I don't really know how to foster that in a community. I only really found it when I came here.

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The fact that the concept of a "safe space" has itself become a political stance is somewhat frustrating in that regard.

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On 15.4.2017 at 0:38 AM, Gormongous said:

 

I don't really know how to foster that in a community. I only really found it when I came here.

 

There are other communities in which it works. I think that in general, a forum of a game developer reflects the ideals that are close to the developer. In the same vein, if a game developer has vocally argued against the gamergate fiasco, and has taken flak for it, you can probably discuss feminism with like minded people in their forum. The Double Fine and Red Thread Games forums come to mind... which aren't frequented by me without reason...

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On 4/14/2017 at 3:42 PM, Cleinhun said:

The fact that the concept of a "safe space" has itself become a political stance is somewhat frustrating in that regard.

What would it be if not a political stance?

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2 hours ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

What would it be if not a political stance?

I guess I meant that it's hard to have a safe space for discussion without the conversation at least partially becoming about safe spaces rather than the thing you wanted to discuss.

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I think it's an amazing essay.  I found it very very very difficult to get through, as an educated white guy who has probably recommended 20 different DFW things to 20 different women over the course of my life.  I'm sitting here stewing in a visceral kind of horrified revulsion about it.  I... don't think I'm going to recommend DFW anymore until I've thought about it, like, a lot.

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I thought it was a fine piece. I read Infinite Jest and fucking hated it. Some of DFW's other stuff is fine. I don't tend to recommend him to people with the exception of A Supposedly Fun... which is kind of funny.

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Yeah, the essay is at least worth a look for any fans of David Foster Wallace. I would include myself as one of those - I've read all his stuff, apart from The Broom of the System - but I am a long way from being an evangelist for him. (Or at least I hope I am? My initial reaction to the piece was fairly mixed, and probably not all that interesting; it's difficult to put into words that don't end up sounding something like 'not all men'.)

 

One suggestion: I liked the essay much better when I read it 'backwards', the second time around - i.e. starting at the end and working my way up, one paragraph at a time. For some reason I have found this a very satisfying way of re-reading lately. 

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As a great fan of DFW, I think that's a great article. I'm happy I've mostly grown out to recommending things without considering the audience, so there's not much pain reading this, mostly retroactive embarrassment I'd already handled.

 

The Zadie Smith piece she mentions is also excellent by the way.

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