| Nymeria said: The line in the west is often seeing the gap in mentality of joking about rape or making rape threats and being confronted about it. This forum has been really respectful and I appreciate that. In other places online I have felt the hostility and received numerous threats involving rape. Play online and the second they hear my voice my sex becomes a topic and almost inevitably turns to violent statements such as "You fucking dumb cunt, I'd rape your ass until you bleed slut!" Do I think they mean this? No. I think they feel embarrassed they lost to me in a game, and in their impotence lash out in rage to try to gain power in the situation by scaring me. If brought out behind the wall of online anonymity and forced to sit in front of people you'd likely get a meek "I didn't mean it, it was a joke, I'm sorry |
I believe it. I don't really do social gaming online anymore for precisely that reason. I too have found VG Chartz to be an unusually welcoming space. (That said, I get discouraged easily anymore and am trying to move past that.) Other gaming forums, like Game FAQs, I have found to be substantially more hostile. And actual online gaming is really the worst. I can't deal with that anymore.
In fact, I was reading an article in the Guardian not long ago that said many women in online gaming are actually resorting to pretending to be male to avoid sexual harassment and threats of violence, especially in the wake of Gamergate. I wonder if that's not true on a lot of gaming forums as well; if there aren't rather more women around these spaces than we're led to believe.
| o_O.Q said: " the fact that Donald Trump is my president right now, being as he won election shortly AFTER being caught on video boasting about sexually attacking women on a routine basis." is this about what happened with stormy daniels? "27% of women and 7% of men surveyed say that they been sexually attacked before" how do they differentiate between the attacks and harassment? "In fact, wittingly or otherwise, you (any given individual) in all likelihood actively participate in rape-positive culture on a daily basis. Here's a particularly obvious example of how: demographically speaking, the average member of this message board consumes online pornography routinely. " good point, porn is exclusively about the objectification of women and is now more popular than ever i honestly don't see how someone can advocate for the fair treatment of women and watch porn, the two things are like oil and water, you cannot mix them because of the attitudes and entitlement porn propagates in the minds of men about women |
To answer these queries in order:
The contents of the infamous Access Hollywood video and the "Stormy Daniels" affair are distinct. In the Access Hollywood video, Trump boasts about physically assaulting women without their consent. Shortly after the video came out, more than a dozen women went public with precisely those kinds of stories about Mr. Trump. (One of whom will be running for public office this year, incidentally.) The "Stormy Daniels" affair is a separate case that did not involve assault. It is, however, one could reasonably argue, nonetheless related to rape culture in the same vein that the Aziz Ansari case was: there may not have been an actual or attempted rape in either of these particular cases, but the fact that these women nonetheless felt obligated to accede despite not wanting to have sex with the individual in question is also a commonplace phenomenon that I feel is worthy of discussion. If you don't feel that it's acceptable to say no when you don't want to have sex, that is a problem in its own right, IMO.
Regarding the second question, concerning how one differentiates between sexual harassment and sexual violence, the line gets a little thin in places, but essentially what's regarded as sexual harassment ranges in severity from catcalls on the street to most of the #MeToo stories you hear about on the news anymore involving things like the boss ordering you to get on the desk and spread your legs for him or threatening to fire you if you refuse to have sex with him, for example, while sexual assault is a term usually reserved for either completed or attempted rape. It's all really a difference of a shared principle's degrees. All of this is.
Regarding your final point wondering how, as you put it, "someone can advocate fair treatment for women and watch porn", I think many people just don't think about these things and how it might be affecting their psyches. Especially if you're growing up today. It's not cool for guys especially to ask those sorts of reflective questions, you know?
Last edited by Jaicee - on 09 April 2018
