You have to be careful here, though.

It is one thing to be conscious of the fact that, to some extent, you view some races less positively than others. It is quite another to use that as a basis to actively discriminate in favour of the race that you like less. This is especially catastrophic at the level of government policy, because do you really think that discrimination in favour of black people is going to improve the opinion of black people held by the rest of the population? It's something you need to consciously consider over time, and it's something that will take time to fix. In the mean time, it will be far more helpful to try and crack down on crime, drugs and poor education in black neighbourhoods than to start enacting affirmative action policies.

But none of this has anything to do with the thread, and I'm not familiar with any test showing a higher opinion of men than women, only a higher predisposition of each gender towards certain jobs. Gender is not the same thing as race; it has never been a case of one superior and one inferior gender, an oppressor and an oppressed, but rather two restrictive gender roles with advantages and disadvantages on each side that in any case have no reason to exist in modern society - consider that, although a woman couldn't vote, she also was not expected to fight in wars.

I guess we have to agree to disagree then... I can't agree with that basis, and I'm not willing to dig through papers and papers of academic research to make some sense out of it, assuming I could, not to mention the fact that science is always a work in progress... And if that notion were true, it opens a rather ugly can of worms that might not even have a solution anyway... Assuming that you're going to be racist/sexist without any evidence of it and trying to blindly compensate for this is not a solution to me. If you can't consciously recognize your bias at hand, how can you properly correct it ? How do you know that you're not overcompensating it ?

And I have to disagree with your claim about conscious thought and racism as well... Can't say I have any evidence to back this up as I haven't looked for it, but I still see plenty of anecdotal evidence regarding the reasons why people discriminate others, with old negative stereotypes, misplaced blame and hate for unrelated issues and some remnants of discriminatory ideologies being still significant today. And then there's those who just discriminate as a way to keep power or control over something... Like "hardcore gamers" do with "casual" games/gamers ! (half-joke, half-serious here...)

Oh, and I do constantly challenge any bias I might have... I don't pretend that race and sex don't exist, I just take them into account only when they're relevant to the situation as any other element, as opposed to make them decisive regardless of it. And I believe avoiding double-standards is key to all this.

By the way, I still believe that all this has more to do with the big elefant in the room, the different and conflicting views that society has about sex, rather than an alleged discriminatory act. The issue starts when people see other members of their own genre engaging on certain activities that they consider negative and interpret that as a negative statement against the whole genre, jumping to conclusions. And in this case, the activity in question is being linked to sex appeal as the main intent (already questionable), which in turn is linked to female discrimination (an even bigger assumption with no basis to me). If people were more open to sexuality in general instead of regularly giving it negative connotations, this issue would not exist.

PS: My last post on the subject here. I'll read whatever others want to add, but this is it from me. I think I've wrote enough...

Ignorance is not a defense in an arguement.   This very much isn't a work in progress and is, in fact a widely accepting piece of information with no real disenting research.

Well... except the test i linked to.  It has one for race and one for sex.

Nor did I actually argue for any laws.

Just for people to have some sense and realize that because of such things, it's pretty obvious that some things will be more offensive then the opposite case, because well... they have completely different context.

Have you actually read the thread? Or even just my post? I don't find offensive any attire in the right context. I've been in churches and mosques were even shorts are frowned upon, I've been to clubs and concerts were clothing and dancing might be considered extreme. I've even been to nudist beaches a few times, with friends of both sexes.

I don't consider what the dancers did offensive. They are working girls, and I don't know them of their personal situation to give tranchant judgments about how happy they are with this gig.

I consider what the sponsor did offensive and inappropriate.

Once again: at GDC there were panels about the difficulties of women workers in the game industry. Follow the links from the news pieces about the IGDA story and you'll find the cases of stunted careers, demeaning jobs, sexual harassment both explicit and low-intensity that women working in the field have to put up with every day. Because it's a boys club.

Every year many woman attendants to game events anonymously protest against the "tradition" of booth babes, because they feel their career would be jeopardized or at least they might be socially impaired on the workplace if they did so openly. Because it's a boys club.

IGDA's Executive Director Kate Edwards herself about gender issues in the industry on this very Monday. And Brenda Romero spoke at GDC about how the use of purely physical female image at game shows creates a barrier that makes most women uncomfortable, and that makes them feel extraneous. Because it's a boys club.

And then workers of both sexes are invited to meet and socialize at a IGDA party, and the sponsor can't come up with anything better than having an exhibition of (female) club dancers. How skimpy their outfit was is partially a matter of personal taste. What is objectively undeniable is that they were there to provide sexy eye candy for the boys.

Once again: a boys club. The female attendants disturbed by a one-way sexually charged atmosphere can walk in and socialize, because they must, because even a party or social meeting is a part of the job. They just have to put up again and smile.

It isn't sexist, just infantile. The games industry suffers from a crappy image of fat cheeto munching neckbeard virgins, so the last thing it needs it things like this.

Well, I was basing this on the original article and reactions rather than your post, so I'm not sure to what extent you agree to that.

Firstly, let's focus on the event itself. I'm glad you agree that what the dancers did was not offensive, but surely you have to understand that the dancers themselves did not think it was offensive or demeaning, because if they did, they would not have done it. And to quote Ms Choudhary, a woman herself:

YetiZen did not hire dancers,” wrote Choudary. “We hired avid gamers, who happened to be models, to discuss gaming with the invited guests. The YetiZen team — myself, my co-founder, and our resident artist — were invited by the rappers, along with our gamer-models, to dance for a few minutes on stage.”

So clearly she isn't offended by it either, because she organised it. It's not like they were stripping or pole dancing, they were just dancing.

As for the difficulty of working in the game industry as a woman: I don't deny that, I'm sure it's true. But there are women - Amy Hennig, to name just one - who stick with it anyway, and manage to succeed in it, and don't complain about people dancing at a gaming event. Perhaps more could be done to make the industry seem more attractive to women (stopping short of affirmative action), but that has nothing at all to do with the events of the IGDA party.

I'm with you on booth babes, again, to some degree. I don't think there's anything wrong with having someone dressed as a character from a game, but to have blatant eye candy at what is supposed to be a trade show is wrong.

But to some extent it is always going to be masculinised, like the fashion industry is feminised. Perhaps that's a bad thing, but it's an inevitable thing.

You can't point to Amy Henning, an accomplished successful writer in full control of her career, as a typical representative of the condition of women in the game industry. And thus I can't see the reason for naming her success story.

And I can't see how you can reconcile this:

I'm with you on booth babes, again, to some degree. I don't think there's anything wrong with having someone dressed as a character from a game, but to have blatant eye candy at what is supposed to be a trade show is wrong.

With YetiZen hiring "avid gamers, who happened to be models". Happened to be models? Please! They were selected to be eye candy for the boys, just as booth babes are. The fact that they were asked to dance on stage by the rappers? It must have come as a total impromptu surprise... Let's be intellectually honest here: this is just YetiZen clumsily covering their asses - no pun intended.

Finally, I can't see the sense in the comparison with the fashion industry. The fashion industry for women brings in much more revenue than the one for men, because shopping habits are very different between men and women. Thus it gets more limelight and results in higher fame and more money for the female models than the male ones. Is that what you would call "feminised"?

The similitude would be the game industry producing more games for male players in the 15-35 bracket, and companies that produce that kind of product being more successful. There's a big step going from that to a woman-hostile workplace of brogrammers or to a chauvinistic treatment of real women.

I "just" very much hope for less childish dudebro games. I can vote with my wallet against that and speak against the culture they support, but I can't stand to hear excuses for a childish dudebro industry.

That is what this whole thing is if everyone would just straight up be honest

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/9401/hootersprotest.jpg

You can put your head in the sand and perpetuate sexist stereotypes, or you can read a bit and maybe, just maybe contribute with an educated opinion to the discussion.