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Sexism in the Fighting Game Community


Mister Jack
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http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/sexual-harassment-as-ethical-imperative-the-ugly-side-of-fighting-games

 

Boy, I knew this sort of thing existed, but I had really hoped that the people who do fighting games professionally had enough tact to curb that shit. That definitely didn't happen here. What's worse is that there are people who are actually defending that behavior, which leads me to wonder...what the fuck is wrong with the fighting game community?

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Is this really a thing? I'm listening to a lecherous dick and he seems to have a lapdog copying him but is this really a problem in "the fighting game community"? Is it not just what it is - Disrespectful and sleazy? I mean it's nice to throw labels on a subsection of society but at the end of the day, whether they be male or female, black, white, hispanic or inuit, whatever; assholes will be assholes, and some people like fighting games.

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Sexism, racism, homophobia, and just plain douchebaggery is a problem in all of gaming culture. I've seen it on this message board... someone talking about "fags" in Mass Effect, or a prominent poster describing a woman as a "slut/bitch" in his status update. While the majority of us are respectful, thoughtful, and normal intelligent people, there will always be jerks. Sadly, it just seems like there's more of it in gaming. Personally, I think it's a sub-section of people who use gaming as a way to avoid real life, due to a lack of social skills.

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Yeah, I'm with FDS, I don't think there are more people with those views, I think they're just more vocal. Both because of perceived anonymity and because it's perceived as being acceptable (because they're more vocal... chicken and egg thing, really).

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Do you think there's more, or is it just a symptom of them being anonymous and being more vocal?

Yeah that's a good point, actually. Gamers tend to be better with technology, so they're likely to spend more time on the internet. Which, obviously, brings out the worst of people.

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In my experience, the amount of (hostile) sexist comments increases with the general hostility of the community. Fighting games has a pretty hostile community, but is by far not the most hostile one in gaming today; same goes for the ratio of sexism.

 

Still haven't seen anything as bad as the dota/hon/lol community, on any front. :)

World of Warcraft comes close though :P

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I think the reason this is being attributed to the fighting game community is that Aris fella, acting as self appointed spokesperson for the fighting game community said: “The sexual harassment is part of the culture. If you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community…"

 

Essentially he's brought this criticism to bear on his community, which only serves to make him an even bigger jackass than he already appeared.

 

I think that exactly it, to quote the article posted:

 

 

“This is Aris,” a voice said on the feed. “If you don’t like onions, you get your sandwich without onions on it, man. This is the fighting game community.” He then stated that sexual harassment and the fighting game community are “one and the same thing.”

 

The voice belonged to Aris Bakhtanians, the coach of the Tekken team.

 

It's not really that the fighting game community is exclusive to this, its that the representatives of the community are saying "this is what the fighting game community is" and that makes everything all better.

 

No matter what community you are in, its not ok to sexually harass someone, and to justify it because its "what the community does" only makes it worse.

 

I just remember an old saying my mother taught me, and I'm sure you all heard it in one form or another: "Just because everybody else is doing it, doesn't mean its okay. If everybody jumped off of a bridge, would you do it too?"

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I rarely have issues with sexism, but when I do, I find it's best to respond with humor/trolling them a bit. I usually say something like "Don't be silly. There's no such thing as girls. I just made my real life avatar look and sound like one." Or just take a strike at their masculinity. More often than not when it's someone making comments on gender, it's someone who is trolling or just getting over aggressive because they are losing. If we want to narrow down what games get a lot of sexism, in my opinion it's more of a problem on shooters than it is on fighting games.

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in my opinion it's more of a problem on shooters than it is on fighting games.

 

Perhaps that's because there are more people playing shooters and more people in a single shooter round at any one time? In a fighting game it's you and one other person. Even if that other person is a sexist, they don't have a lot of other people geeing them on. In a shooter you've got 10+ other people so your chance of finding a sexist automatically spikes and if they've got some stooges so much the worse.

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