| KLAMarine said: "A site like this can count its openly female members on one hand (afaik). Is it time to admit that these problems have been baked right into the culture itself? How do we fix these intrinsic issues?" >Sounds like you consider the imbalance between male-female membership on vgchartz to be a bad thing. You list it alongside ills like sexual harassment and misogyny. Do you consider it a bad thing and if so, why? |
The "male = bad, female = good" rhetoric prevalent now is as toxic as anything else and there will be consequences. Female-dominated spaces aren't considered intrinsically negative, the same should be true for male-dominated spaces. There is nothing to fix.
That being said, sexual harassment is all about power, real or perceived, and a good portion of that can come from being in an environment where one sex is more comfortable or confident than the other. There should be an awareness of that, I think.
About a year ago, I was in a situation where I was sexually harassed by two female co-workers in a female-dominated workplace. They did not feel at risk from their behavior so there was nothing to push back against the enjoyment they got from bullying someone else. Some of that had to do with current events and the attitudes that are developing in association with that.
For example, one of them said, "you can't tell on us because no one would believe a guy about being sexually harassed by girls," and the other one chimed in with, "right, we'll just start to cry and tell them you were the one harassing us." They also said, "everyone knows a guy can't be sexually harassed anyway," and, "guys aren't supposed to have feelings."
People are people. Male, female, or anything else, they are more likely to be abusive when they feel in control. The focus shouldn't be on one gender or the other, it should be on teaching everyone why harassment is bad and understanding when it is taking place. It should be taught from the most basic level so that it encompasses everyone by default, regardless of who they are.
