What to do if you see "the sexism"

[triste]

If you see sexism in game, report it, since it violates the rules of the setting as much as waving around a metal handgun does.

Just putting this up plain and simple since we now have very verbose posts regurgitating this point which has already been more succinctly expressed. It is a good answer, the obvious answer, and generally how adults deal with sexism.

Feel free to express all things related to "the sexism" here and on the thread staff split out after I already took the initiative to make this post. Please keep it off the main feedback thread.

_{^{editted to fix links post thread split}}

[ReturnOfTheKing]

And the community doesn't require someone like you to be judge, jury and executioner - be all and end all of opinion and insult it like you have any right to. Ta-ta.

[triste]

Why is it then, that this behavior is more tolerated in Armageddon?

...

The extent to which players are punished for this kind of behavior absolutely is directly tied to their seniority. I have seen players banned for this, and have even banned them myself, when they are relatively new. When they are veterans of the game with multiple ties to staff, or even former staff members - you can certainly ban them, but expect to get your decision reversed.

We need data and information from staff before we characterize the game this way. Just because seniority offered a get out of jail free card in your administration, doesn't mean it is the case now. I am willing to believe your testimony for what things were like when you ran things, but by definition your account is not up to date.

The fact that it doesn't have rules against sexual harassment is a travesty. Sexual harassment is inherently sexist and should go against the rules of consent like everything else sex-related.

First sentence here is untrue because of the sentence immediately following it. Sexual harassment obviously violates the notion of gender equality. Gender equality is a documented part of the setting just like metal scarcity. QED sexual harassment is already against the rules. Report people who are sexist, it is more efficient than gunning down the innocents standing unknowingly near them in broad swathes.

[ReturnOfTheKing]

And the community doesn't require someone like you to be judge, jury and executioner - be all and end all of opinion and insult it like you have any right to. Ta-ta.

[triste]

I like your feedback, I just have a duty to point out accusations about how staff handle things, which are not supported by data.

It is a disservice to the fight for egalitarianism to fight with non-factual rhetoric. We must do better.

[ReturnOfTheKing]

And the community doesn't require someone like you to be judge, jury and executioner - be all and end all of opinion and insult it like you have any right to. Ta-ta.

[Maso]

I think what triste is trying to say is that the issues you are remembering may well not be as prevalent as you recall, and it's unfair to judge the current staffing team off the actions of past staffing teams, since they are always in flux.

We will all have our own views around how staff handle things based on our own personal experiences, but the staff are the only people who have that overview to be able to actually know how big of an issue something is or where those issues actually are and how they are truly handled. If you don't trust staff to be honest about these things, that's entirely different matter. I like to think they do care about the game and the players.

In my mind sexism and sexual harassment are two different topics, personally.

[Dar]

I mean, no offense Return of the King. But your position is very passive aggressive.


You claim to be staff yourself. You've said you've banned people, which means you're not even a storyteller level, you were a higher rank one. But you don't identify yourself.

Imagine this situation. Lieutenant Bob is trying to become a Mayor, or whatever other elected official. A person puts up a video on youtube. The room is dark, so you can't see the face and the voice is obfuscated. That person says that Lieutenant Bob at Police Precinct XYZ was eating baby bears at the zoo at night. That you, as a fellow officer yourself have tried to report him, but 'The Man' upstairs liked Lieutenant Bob over you and shut down your report. And all that was ten years ago.

Which is technically fine, it clearly draws attention from everyone who watches youtube. But one needs a little more then that for an action. One cant just destroy someone's career and social standing over an obscured youtube video that could've been made by Amos who got busted for drug dealing one too many times due to Lieutenant Bob. 

And when people begin to ask, in a pretty respectful manner, for details. For any kind of details. The obscured person's response is, "Alright, you people clearly don't care about baby bears. I'm outta here! Shame on you! Tsk Tsk!"

Edit: In retrospect. My example is even more helpful then what you're doing, ReturnOftheKing. Because in my example, it at least mentions a 'name'. Yours doesn't even do that.

I mean hell. Can a staff member speak with ReturnOfTheKing and at least confirm they really 'were' a staff member before? Staff, or DungeonMasters need to be truthful in their Out of Game Public statements. Because for the game to function, players need to know that things Staff/DMs say is real.   ReturnOfTheKing is adopting the mantle of that trust by claiming being staff. This gives weight to their words, but ... is he/she for real even?

[triste]

Thanks, I just want to add a quick note that it can be hard to get specific with sexual assault because of concern for the safety and anonymity of victims. This is why legal processes exist around this IRL and report/complaint mechanisms exist for our game. Staff feedback on these processes and Dar's question may benefit this conversation because only staff can speak to this piece.

To try and keep things real, and light, R. Kelly, known sexual predator, was just found guilty like a day ago IRL. If you discover R. Kelly is playing this game please report him so we can get rid of him, thank you.

[Harmless]

yeah and the entire reason that R Kelly took this long to be convicted is just more proof of how unable our society is to properly deal with the stark differences between how the cismale gender identity still retains an unfair dominance is that it took 20 years and over sixty female victims, many underage before R kelly finally was convicted.

Right. Justice served.

Anyway, the issue I have right now is yes, I could get into some very very specific details about sexism, but I'm pretty sure posting about it here will just lead to me being warned/scared off by the staff for divulging too much IC info. Mostly to do with the disgusting entirety of "marriage contracts". Or to get into more detail about how certain speech is silenced. I've seen others get into the mode of trying to talk about it and guess what? They get warned/banned/kicked whatever and that's all it ends up with. So, this topic is truly a dead one before it even starts (again), and the way this community reacts to the notion that there might be the same societal patterns reflected in our game and that this game is not immune to such patterns of behavior is like a person refusing to acknowledge that they have cancer. The cancer is there, and removing it may require some careful surgery, but refusing to acknowledge it is not going to make it go away. Obviously, it'll tend to just get worse over time.

But, in a nutshell, it's far more often the case that a female noble or female merchant family member will be given the utterly worse end of the bargain in a marriage contract and the details of how things tend to play out thereafter is just a sad anachronistic reflection of Judeo-christian marriage beliefs and norms rapidly filling the RP content. It stifles the creativity and has, in my experience thus far, utterly ruined the fun of playing this game for anyone who comes here to actually escape the oppressive reality that most of us were born into. Once the same Judeo-Christian values are written into the scrolls and logbooks of the nobility in Armageddon, I feel like I'm roleplaying in southern texas with a bad LARP costume and I kinda want to just log off and play something else.

BTW, I do submit reports about this, but usually I do this while I am still dealing with the disgust of seeing these values portrayed in game and I have done something stupid at the same time. The staff apply the rules of the game in response and the outcomes don't change. But, for the most part I've just documented what I am seeing and get a response like, 'that is the harsh reality of this game world.'

As for how to change such rules; if you were to respect the opinions of your entire playerbase, realizing if you want to grow this entire playerbase you probably should respect and heed the general consensus of not just one majority group, but both the majority group and the several minority groups that seem to form within this game, where opinion lines, or if you insist, gender or identity lines separate, instead of insisting that the game cannot change as the dominant way must remain dominant.  And please note, I do not feel personally disrespected myself. ( I don't, however feel like my opinions are, but you can disrespect my opinions, though a pattern of it will turn me or anyone away over time). Anyway, if others have posted they don't feel respect and they have also posted about sexist attitudes in game... it's probably a real problem.

[triste]

The cancer metaphor is a good one. Chemotherapy--poisoning the whole body to fight the disease--is falling out of favor now that we have more precise treatments. Calling an entire playerbase or staffing team "sexist" is like Chemotherapy in that it poisons our whole community and makes us all feel bad. Let us be precise by either reporting actual offenders, or maybe identifying aspects of the game that seem to cause this cancer like you just offered with your discussion of IG marriage.

I hope that through discussion we can go from vague characterizations to more actionable solutions. Even this previous post is helpful because it is possible there are sexist parts of the game not all of us have seen, because not all of us RP with nobles in this case, etc.

[ItsMeg]

I've been playing since 2002. My most recent examples will be at least a year out of date, but I have no compelling reason to think things have changed dramatically.

Female nobles/GMH tend to be scrutinised far more for their sexual partners. Also trying to sexually harass a male pc with a female leader is pretty hard because typically male PCs will say "sure" and will be seen favourably, whereas female PCs will be more likely to not be interested and thus are viable targets for harassment.

So simply saying "sexually harrass male PCs" is not viable.

[MeTekillot]

I don't know that presuming men are always open to sexual advances is the way to go here in our work to tackle sexism in our community.

[ItsMeg]

I don't know that presuming men are always open to sexual advances is the way to go here in our work to tackle sexism in our community.

I agree. Good thing noone has.

[Delirium]

I've been playing since 2002. My most recent examples will be at least a year out of date, but I have no compelling reason to think things have changed dramatically.

Female nobles/GMH tend to be scrutinised far more for their sexual partners. Also trying to sexually harass a male pc with a female leader is pretty hard because typically male PCs will say "sure" and will be seen favourably, whereas female PCs will be more likely to not be interested and thus are viable targets for harassment.

So simply saying "sexually harrass male PCs" is not viable.

Men can 100% be sexually harassed as well. Giving the impression that they're happy to say yes all the time is not only inaccurate but plays into the double standards that plague sexism, where men are congratulated but women are shamed.

[ItsMeg]

Just to be clear: I have never said male PCs can't be sexuallly harassed. I have seen it in game, but I've seen it happen far less often then with female PCs. In addition I have observed more willingness to instigate and be receptive to sexual RP in male PCs then female ones. If that's only my experience, then so be it. But it has been my repeated experience.

And yea. Female PCs are more likely to be judged on who they sleep with. That was my point. It's gotten a lot better over the years, but that undertone is still there, especially at the top.

[triste]

TLDR:
Sexism happens, yes, yes. I love it when people change and:
- stop being sexist
- report or react to sexist behavior in a way that helps other peeps end their sexism.

[sermon]
Because we are a small community, please remember to be kind and forgiving, and please allow people to continue to take risks. Fighting the Sexism ≠ fighting all flirting and romantic interaction. Fighting the Sexism ≠ calling other peoples' characters sexist simply if they portray a form of femininty/masculinity/androgyny you don't agree with. Reportable sexism is any sexism that is obvious and obviously misplaced in this setting, like mapping sexist terminology like "cat fight" to "quirri fight." Reportable sexism is saying "You cannot do X because your gender is Y." We can fix this problem rather than dwelling on it ad infinitum. I am SO glad we've had this discussion, now we should know how to DO something about it. Doing something about it is not tantamount to forming a circular firing squad IF we approach this the right way, by reporting violating behaviors and helping people correct those behaviors.
[/sermon]

[Cabooze]

With as much complaining about this that's being done, I really feel like I have to say: In my time in playing Armageddon in the past, and even relatively recently, I've seen no such sexism.

[triste]

I've seen a loooooot of shit IRL and IG. I have never seen someone setting up a terrorist attack IRL or IG because despite seeing pounds of bad doo doo in life, terrorist attacks are improbable AF. But you know what they say about terrorist attacks: If you see something, say something.

There is nothing unsexier than defending sexism. I have beliefs about free expression and I find some rules people have tried to impose in the last year to stop sexism, well, unsexy, but I will never defend sexism or pretend it doesn't exist. I am thankful for posters like Bebop for being brave enough to describe what sexism looks like IG so that we know how to identify it and stop it. I admit to having said "quirri fight" maybe once in game and I am never doing it again because Bebop's account allowed me to realize what I once thought was benign is in fact malignant.

Let's do the sexy thing and end sexism by sticking to our rules around setting that already exist and holding eachother accountable.

[Ender]

With as much complaining about this that's being done, I really feel like I have to say: In my time in playing Armageddon in the past, and even relatively recently, I've seen no such sexism.

I once started a small crew based out of Luir's with a male PC.  I had people following me and listening to me and generally being good underlings.  The character eventually decided to turn over the crew to a female PC.  She was more capable than my PC and more active.  But I watched as PCs constantly second guessed her and would downright refuse to listen to her like they would me, for no other discernable reason.

I recently watched as a female raider leader was constantly disrespected and called ALL SORTS of gendered insults, and at least one of these was another PC that was in a sponsored role and should have known better.  This was less than a year ago.

I saw an instance recently where a female character was described as a whore/slut/dirty for their choice of who they slept with.  This was also less than a year ago.

When they occurred I thought about reporting them, but they weren't directed at my character and it felt weird and awkward to take a stand.  But seeing posts like these and posts from the staff I've realized I've helped no one by staying silent on it.

[triste]

The leadership topic is interesting but it is difficult to fix.

Here's the TLDR on being a female leader: Do the best you can and you will prove women can be great leaders; Report obvious sexism if it happens, but don't assume sexism exists among subordinates just like you shouldn't assume anything about your subordinates without proof.

I have been allowed to play a leader role a whopping one time in my time here. It was a tiny clan but an utter shit show, I played a female boss with two male underlings who were obviously undermining me from day one. Personally I didn't look at the digital junk between our digital legs and say "this is sexism." I didn't think "They can somehow see that I have XX chromosomes as a player past this screen and are being sexist." I have found looking at everything through a critical gender theory lens poisonous, personally. It puts a chip on people's shoulder and leaves them hung up on invisible demons and blinds them to solutions. Personally. This is why I literally changed my career from social justice work to coding. So when I struggled in this game playing a female leader with crappy  subordinates who happened to be male, my ONLY thought was "Well, I will have to do harder to command their respect next time." I didn't say "This game is sexist, I give up." This is exactly the same thing I do IRL to keep sane in a sexist world. Powerful female leaders like Sheryl Sandberg also do this and recommend the same.

At the same time I played my crappy leader PC who didn't even last a year, there was another female guild leader who my character worked with. This other female leader had some crappy subordinates who coincidentally were male as well, but she kept them in line. I don't know if the person playing this female leader was male, and frankly I don't care because I am not a sexist person. But fucking cheers and Kudos to that player for playing a strong female leader of the sort I wish I could see more of IG and IRL.

My PC was ultimately assassinated either by subordinates,  that other female leader, someone else entirely. It was an appropriate end for a bad leader. I didn't, again, for a second blame invisible entities like "sexism" because your best option as a female leader is ALWAYS to be personally accountable and prove your abilities.

If someone does a sexist act, report it. But you cannot assume sexism if it is not obvious. Even if you feel and think it exists, even if it hurts.

This isn't a one way street and it is on ALL of us to be the change. I was just hanging out with my ex military GF last night who has two jobs and she emblemizes this debate to me as well. While the US still has dumb rules not allowing women in some combat roles, this chick did EVERYTHING short of that, and we have women like her to thank for more combat positions opening for women in recent years. In Armageddon we have no such restrictions, so if you are a badass female who wants to see more badass female leaders, be that. Staff will support you as a good leader regardless of gender. Players should do the same as well.

We can identify the problem all day, every day, like the previous post and now hundreds of posts have at this point. Let's now do some shit about this shit:
- don't be sexist
- report obvious sexism
- be the best player you can be

[Halaster]

Excellent discussion, and the topic is settled pretty well:  What to do if you see 'the sexism'.  It should be clear that reporting it is important (as well as other fine points made).

No real need for 2 threads on roughly the same topic, so gonna lock this one in favor of the other.