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goio's great community

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Lydia Litvyak:
Like everybody else who's been playing for more than a few weeks, I really love goio's community. I love how things are structured (for now) such that getting to know all the other regular players is inevitable, and how social the game is while remaining a serious competitive game. But I feel like the community has an overblown opinion of how inclusive it is, particularly when it comes to women.

I'm going to be blunt here: I get catcalled, told to suck various parts of people's anatomy, and have graphic things said about my body more in goio than I do in dota. You know, the game full of racist, misogynistic 14 year olds? Yeah, that dota. And while it pains me to say this, no one here seems at all interested in fixing this. As far as I can tell, making sure female players feel safe is secondary to making sure toxic, aggressive male players feel welcomed. I've had people threaten to rape me or other female players with mods or even muse employees literally in the lobby listening to it happen and to my knowledge nothing was ever done about it. If it was, it was only after it was way too late anyway.

The backlash to the girls of icarus event is just another aspect of this. One of the ideas behind it is to give female players a chance to play without having to worry about that stuff happening, and to connect with other people who they can talk about these issues with. But the community as a whole has reacted by lampooning it, decrying it as sexist, and making fun of it in lobby chat. Female-only events or subgroups are not unheard of, and many other communities have collectively acknowledged that they're a pretty reasonable thing to have. Why not goio?

It's like half the guys in this community are more upset at the idea of me wanting to be able to play without getting threatened or catcalled than they are at the reality of me getting threatened and catcalled.

I guess what I'm saying here is that I'm really disappointed. I like you guys, and I want to believe you're better than this.

Queso:
Unfortunately moderation is nowhere near as prevalent as it should be. If a mod ever see this, or you contact a mod or Muse member, we'll take it very seriously. Reports are the best tool we have right now to track this sort of behavior. If you get yourself and others to report it, it might not make the problem go away immediately, but it will help prevent that person from doing it in the future. If we don't see it, there isn't too much we can do. I'll do what I can to keep our CAs and Mods aware of it and more pro-active about moderating this type of behavior. If you have any issues in game with players, CAs, Mods, or Muse feel free to email abuse@musegames.com. We take any emails sent there very seriously.

Skrimskraw:
It is as easy for a male player to be offended by being compared or even put into the same group of people by referring to them as a whole unit. Like it is offending some female players with sexual slander and other negative comments. If you are refferring to the morg post in the pit. It is a joke on the separation of the sexeaand a spoof on how misandric that idea actually is. Like being called men as a whole group and being referred to as being exhausting to play with, you know the girla before boys idea in it. Tbh we dont care if you play woth the girls.  However like i am offended from bebeing insinuated to being called misoganistic.  Some female players are also offended by other female players doing that.

Lydia Litvyak:
queso: I know. I try to report everyone who does this. But there have been times when a mod or a muse employee was in the lobby or was brought in while it was happening and still nothing was done. I have every faith that you are doing your best but clearly things are not working as they should.

skrim: this is exactly what I am talking about. when we talk about this stuff, you guys react with "it's so mean of you to imply that /my/ community could be misogynistic!" instead of acknowledging that we have a problem and that you need to be a part of the solution. I have a lot of respect for you but I am sure you can imagine how depressing it is to make a post about how the community seems more open to misogynists than to people who complain about them and have a moderator respond with "well, it's offensive of you to imply that some men here are misogynistic". Is "some people here you share superficial traits with are bad people" really comparable to graphic threats and harassment? I did not even refer to male players as a whole, so why are you so eager to identify with and defend the bad apples?

B'Elanna:
Being in this community for a year I have tried posting on this forum 3 times:
[*] Rape Jokes
A simple reminder not to use the word "rape" to equate sexual violence with someone's achievement
Male Players were attacking me, threatening me, contemplating the ways I may or may not have been sexually abused to take such offence and mocking the very point I was trying to make.
- October 08, 2013, 05:30:45 pm : posted
- October 09, 2013, 05:50:01 pm : locked

--- Quote ---The cause for which this topic was started was good, but the discussion has turned in the wrong direction entirely.
This thread is locked, and the offending posts have been removed.
--- End quote ---
24 hours

[*] Girls of Icarus Online
A suggestion to have a better network for women to connect to other female gamers of this community.
The 3 kind of comments men made:
a) "LOL if I wear a skirt do I count :)"
b) "That's sexist, why is it always about gender with you :("
c) "Aaaaaaw are the women emancipating themselves? that's sho cuuuute"
The rest held a council amongst each other contemplating weather or not they were approving.
Not counting the worst comments that were removed, filled with accusations, insults and sexist slurs.
Women stopped responding in the threat and started approaching me about it in private, to avoid the argument or not to out themselves
This threat was made for women to reach out, and the responses to it didn't invite women, it scared them off.
- January 23, 2014, 01:39:36 pm : posted.
- January 24, 2014, 12:02:01 am : CA had to get involved, comments were removed

--- Quote ---Is this the point at which I state we should keep this civil?

Yes it is, please keep this thread civilized, if you want to have an argument about gender equality then take it to the pm's. I'd rather not have this thread be full of argument and counter-argument.

--- End quote ---
- January 24, 2014, 04:00:13 am : CA threatened to lock the threat, comments were removed

--- Quote ---Please don't make us lock this thread. It's a great idea as stated by others but the few are going to ruin it.

You realize by your negativity you're only killing the community you're all pledging stating to enjoy.
--- End quote ---
- January 24, 2014, 12:51:44 pm : developers involved themselves, comments were removed.

--- Quote ---This is not a thread to discuss sexism.  This is a call to players who would like to play together.  In this case, it is a call to female gamers who want to play together.

Show your support (no matter what sex you identify with), sign up with them, make friends.  This is all acceptable behavior in this thread.  Please keep the discussion focused to the topic at hand.

If you have problems about this group existing, don't discuss it here in this thread, do it in your own time and outside of Guns.  Muse does not discriminate and we do not tolerate inappropriate behavior (bigotry, sexism, bullying, just to name a few).  In fact, this is a great initiative since it's promoting groups of people making friends.  We're all about making friends.  Never impede on someone's ability to make friends.  Please think twice about posting your comments here.

When in doubt, don't post at all.

Thank you
--- End quote ---

10 hours to be threatened to be shut down, 18 hours for a dev to have to voice MUSE's approval for the harassments to stop.

[*] BORG Gaming Nights.
Since my initial friendly invite post was so swamped with boys contemplating sexism for the first time in their lives because this time it was affecting them, and women were actively avoiding it, I posted an open invite to one night a month where I'd be up for playing games anyway for fellow women to join me in my misery.
I KNEW there would be backlash, and I chose my words very carefully.
After longer consideration I chose to address this invite only to the people it was ment to be for, and not apologise and justify, yet I left you with an image with an adorable fat little B'Elanna explaining to you:
"Please try to respect that online games are still a very male dominated environment and although men are our friends, women also need their own space"
Since I learn form my mistakes this time I locked the conversation making it a silent invite.
There was nothing to comment on. I was gonna play that time and women were invited to join me.
So I thought...
- September 16, 2014, 07:54:06 pm : posted
- September 17, 2014, 07:00:55 am : Mezhu's MORG post was made.
12 hours
[/list]
This Post was supposed to mock my efforts of offering a safe space for women, by jokingly offering and therefore creating an environment to perpetuate sexist stereotypes.
In itself it tried to copy me and then make fun of my unnecessary "misandric" exclusivity.
While the "B" in BORG stands for "bunch" I have yet to wonder what the "M" stands for, but my guess is as good as anyone's.
Furthermore it describes a list of things fellow men need to live up to to prove their worthiness:

--- Quote ---Only people with an average hair body density of 10 hair/cm2 allowed.
Must yell a lot, punch stuff in anger whenever losing and make forced sex jokes at least once a minute.
Must be confident in own genitalia size and possibly brag about it in public.
Must be into sports. (tennis, volley, chess and the like do not count).
Must drink scotch and smoke cigars on a daily basis and preferably during events.
Muscles are not a must but are definitely a plus. Moustache can work as an alternative, bonus points for full-grown beards.
Must enjoy pornographic material.
Strictly straight-only. If not, at least act like it.
Any word of cooking and shopping (exuding arms) will result to an irrevocable permanent ban from our little community.
--- End quote ---
While my invitation made it clear all women were included.
Using words like "female socialised" and "female identified" to make sure trans*women knew they were included, not only that but also without the need to out themselves. women are women.
And the only positive thing I can say about that is that AT LEAST no one ruined this silent trust to not abuse this discretion, because I have no idea how to deal with that and I would never ask anyone to PROVE their gender to me, besides it being impossible because gender is a concept and construct.

It's sad enough that men only give a shit about sexism when they feel excluded.
It's worse when they destroy every harmless effort I have to reach out to other female gamers.

Why would you do that? I don't understand.

What actually makes it the worst is that this is known as one of the best gaming communities out there.
This is as good as it gets...

Yet my airship- engineering days are filled with dialogues like:
"Oh you're new. While your Hwacha reloads you can use the Gat on the side. Just count to 14, by the end of it you should be back in the gun to reload the rounds. Heavy for less recoil, burst for mid to short range disable."
a) - "Nice voice changer" disbelieve
b) - "OMG YOU SOUND SO CUTE" objectification
- EITHER WAY: ONE EAR IN THE OTHER OUT

What baffles me is how you care more about the reputation of "not all men" than to just understand that it's a fucking pain in the ass to be objectified, second guessed and sexually harassed all day, and craving female company, which is hard to come by casually.
It's nice to spend time with fellow women who actually see you as a human being.
and yes. I know. /not all men!/

Yet enough. So here we are..

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