I'm still attempting to catch up with everything that happened, so my apologies for any outstanding or incorrect information. This is what I've been able to gather so far:
Giant Bomb, an extremely popular video game blog and podcast recently hired two more people - both men in an already exclusively male cast. Samantha Allen runs a pretty popular gaming podcast and blog of her own, as well as having written several editorial pieces for other game sites and speaking at gaming conventions and conferences across the country about the increasingly relevant gender issues the industry faces.
Here is a tweet she made on Sunday about the news:
- "I think in all of this I'm most angry with myself for once honestly believing that @giantbomb would hire someone who wasn't a white guy."
... Cue unrelenting abuse and harassment from, you guessed it, the men. And I do mean "unrelenting" - her feed is absolutely bombarded with such hateful, vitriolic bile from thousands of people. It should probably go without saying that you don't want to read any of these exchanges, and if you do huge trigger warning for just about every offense toward women you can imagine.
Seeing everything transpire just makes my heart sink even lower than it already has. I am also a trans woman with aspirations in the field of video games and computer science. Is this what I have to look forward to? By merely participating in something I love? I shudder at the thought.
the majority of my problem with this scenario among other things. I choose to simply not get involved because both sides of this fence are extremely argumentative, just talking at each other instead of to each other. There's no development to made operating from that perspective.
That's exactly how I feel. There's never going to be a consensus, and videogames won't be taken seriously until debate can be handled maturely by either side. That being said, and as psulli says, that was a very unprofessional tweet, and an unprofessional move. It's not her fault, really it's the fact that journalism and gaming are way too intertwined together. It's too casually handled, and there's no style-guide for game journalists to follow and practice. News editors whoop and holler at conferences when new games are announced, swag is freely given and taken. etc. etc. You would never, ever see this sort of bullshit with BBC writers, for example. In the end, though it's shitty that Allen didn't get the job, that's for sure, and it does nothing to improve an already misogynistic, shitty culture. But I think pushback is occurring, and that's a good thing. I think any discussion is good discussion, especially as people are uncomfortable with the discussion. Hopefully as time passes, we'll get less characters that look like Mr. T, have guns for arms, and speak in not-very-well-done ebonics... and more characters like Lee from the Walking Dead.
It is a difficult subject. Game journalism is a horrible landscape at the moment. RPS has the saplings of some game industry coverage with some diversity starting to take root there. I have to say frickin' bless Anita Sarkeesian for moving the ball forward. She is simply illustrating that video games and their coverage are sexist and anti-feminist. It is crazy that that act should even have to be considered brave. But it is. And there is very little diversity showing ground up from the pro players. There are a few women/transgender pro players, but for the most part that is still boys club. I do get it, though. Flaming out in public can be satisfying ... for a bit. Especially if there is no perceived path to success. But the loss the industry will experience if she stays quits is not so satisfying. But perhaps that bright people like Allen even gravitate away from an industry spawned in creating echoes of ethos, pathos, and angst from a nation whose history is: de jure slave nation->de jure apartheid nation->de facto apartheid nation ... when ex-slave (in theory) got to vote before women did in said nation. I think, however, that, Samantha Allen should still stick it out. She could maybe offer congrats to the colleague while suggesting next time she should be hiring him. Shit is changing.
It is changing, you're right. I see things getting better all the time - but then I am very bluntly pulled back down to earth with the reality of things such as this still happening. There is indeed something admirable in sticking it out, but I am very familiar with the internal conversation that happens when thinking about that: is it worth it? Do I care about this so much that I would put my own well-being and potential safety below making a minuscule dent on a demographic that very clearly doesn't want me in the first place? It is part of the reason why I don't use Twitter or for that matter have much of a web presence at all. It's exhausting enough having internalized stereotype threat and imposter syndrome to the point of being silent, let alone having so many others confirm as much to be their ultimatum. I can't say I blame anyone for being upset at that.
It is one thing to be called out for lack of professionalism, but that isn't what is happening here. This is mass ad hominem from the lowest of the low for an individual making a comment about the disappointing continued homogeneity of an already exclusive and pandering industry. Regardless of her history with Giant Bomb, the comment does not in any context justify responses such as: ... and this is only the tip of the iceberg of toxic reactions I could find. To compare first and foremost her conduct in lieu of her detractors' feels very disingenuous.
It's still like the point I was trying to make: There's no development to made operating from that perspective. We're talking about a culture that has a very strong component of intentional verbal/visual/mental abuse (trolling.) The strength of the trolling behavior provides the perfect shield for pure ignorance as well as obtaining a successful angry reaction. To this day, I have not seen a method of dealing with this component other than simply not engaging it at all, "do not feed the trolls." The catch-22 here is that if you respond with negative frustrated feelings, you're always going to lose because that's what charges their batteries. What has a far better chance of pushing progress is like what psulli mentioned. Those that have the issue build the version they want to see. You can't force people to see the light, but you can facilitate it.
This is the first I've heard of this and honestly from what I've read so far, it seems like people are criticizing her for speaking out, and this is exactly why she needed to speak out. The entire world needs to have a much more serious conversation about the equality of women and girls, because this is a pervasive issue everywhere.
The reason she is getting a backlash is because she makes it sound like hiring a "white guy" is a horrible crime, even though he was super qualified for the job. Sure, but arguing that Giantbomb should hire someone who is less qualified simply because she is a woman, which is essentially what Samantha Allen is doing, is not the right way to go about having that conversation, as is easily seen all over the internet.This is the first I've heard of this and honestly from what I've read so far, it seems like people are criticizing her for speaking out, and this is exactly why she needed to speak out.
The entire world needs to have a much more serious conversation about the equality of women and girls, because this is a pervasive issue everywhere.
#1 What business is it of her's who they hire? #2 What if the men they hired were the most qualified for the position? Are people insinuating giantbomb should hire potentially less qualified people to appease feminists? #3 Trigger warnings are for people with PTSD. Not people that are offended.
Victims of violent acts of transmisogyny and misogyny in general would appreciate content warnings for some the comments under the cut, yes. It's a good thing you are the authority on this to set the record straight, however, that they are only to be used for "people with PTSD" - which itself is about as far-reaching of a qualifier as possible considering what PTSD actually is - but I suspect you don't really care about that.
Agreed. People who use trigger warnings for nonsense like is an insult those who actually need them. I don't even know how this is newsworthy, after all 40% of unemployed workers are millennials.
The link you posted doesn't say that. It says that 40% of the unemployed are millennials. So if you took 10 random unemployed people, 4 of them should be millennials. From the data given, we can't really determine what percentage of millennials are unemployed. That said, you should take unemployment statistics with a grain of salt - Those who remain unemployed for too long have a tendency to fall off the official government statistics, making it impossible to work out what the actual unemployment figures are. Cheers!
"a man" is kind of an understatement. Giantbomb didn't just hire "a man" Look at the credentials of the person who was hired, and you will see why he was hired. If you want to set the grounds that we should be hiring women for the sake of it instead of hiring people who are more qualified for the job, you go right ahead, in the meantime i'll be living in the real world.
The "real world" that is biased in your favor - my point.