| mZuzek said: I wouldn't say any of this is "revealing", as it's been pretty obviously an issue for as long as I can remember. Maybe revealing in that it's happening within the companies themselves rather than just among gaming communities, but really, it isn't surprising. Certainly not with it being centered around Activision/Blizzard. |
Honestly never thought I'd be the one to say this as the forum's arguably principal feminist voice, but don't be so cynical about men! This isn't how half the male gaming population is. I mean look around you. This is a gaming community of sorts and everyone who's posted to this thread before me is a guy. How many posts come off as denying or defending these companies or the kind of toxically misogynistic environments we're discussing? I see none. My point is that hostile cultures like the ones at Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft aren't just inevitable, online or off. I spend about half my internet time in dedicated feminist spaces reading about and discussing issues like sexual harassment and violence against women with other women for whom these problems are often just as personal and it's given me some ideas about these issues can be addressed. I don't know how popular they'll be, but I think they are practical.
The first thing that a company that's serious about ending a toxically misogynistic culture in their business can do is to stop making their workers sign goddamn nondisclosure agreements that conveniently prevent them from going to actual, external authorities that exist independently of the company. The second thing I believe can make a major difference is to create women-only space within the company. I remember one time back in the '90s when Sega decided that one of their games (Magic Knight Rayearth) should be developed entirely by women to help ensure that it would appeal to the intended audience of girls and young women, so they created an all-female development team and assigned the entire development process to them. I'm of the opinion that stuff like that should be done more broadly and more often in the present day because the fact is that all-female environments have a statistically demonstrable positive effect on the self-confidence, and therefore the expectations, of girls and women. Women who participated in the Girl Scouts as kids, for example, exhibit significantly higher self-confidence in general. Same basic principle. Gaming-related work spaces are overwhelmingly male for the most part at present. There's a feeling of greater safety and security and less constant worry about your outward appearance that one experiences in all-female environments and you can get used to it and begin to really want, expect, and ultimately insist on that peace of mind outside those environments too.
There are also wider changes that need to be made in the public policy arena to address these problems more largely and I would single out some new laws in France as exemplary in creating severe fines for street harassment, greatly extending statutes of limitations, stuff like this, and I'm sorry but the ready availability of online pornography today really does need to be curtailed, especially when it comes to access for children because it just demoralizes women and especially girls and reduces self-confidence in most and increases negative sex-stereotyping, besides all of which a lot of sexual harassment that happens, like illicit recording for example, occurs for pornographic purposes, to be posted online. School and street harassment are some of the most common forms and we don't even talk about them here in the U.S. hardly; all the discussion seems to be around workplace harassment here.
Anyway, like I said, don't know how well they'll go over, but those are some of my ideas concerning what can be done vis-a-vis the gaming industry, work place culture in general, and society in general.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 25 July 2021
