Sexual harassment

[KisaiTenshi]

Everything I saw about gamergate made it look like a vile cesspit that attracted the worst of the gaming community.

"Look At Gamergate"

ah, yes, the man-baby movement. Let's look to them for moral enlightenment. Genius.

Gamergate, is responsible for creating the bogeymen they feared, so it's no surprise that people who still think there is legitimacy in it, endorse extreme rightwing propaganda. Where Gamergate blames women, alt-right blames immigrants. It's all about creating a target to punch down on until it's accepted as truth, and people in the movement are fooled into either parting with their money or their lives like any other cult.

- in extreme cases they may threaten to harm themselves if you try to break off the friendship or don't do what they want. This may not be a direct threat, it may take the form of telling you they would have hurt themselves if you hadn't been there for them or they don't know how they'll cope without you).

It is really hard to combat this because abusers tend to choose people who are vulnerable and/or very empathic and ruthlessly exploit their sympathy or good nature to maintain their hold.

The entire "I'll hurt myself/someone else/pet/property if you won't do what I ask" is the point that you absolutely must call law enforcement. It may not matter if YOU care about that person, but that person is now a direct threat to everyone they are around, and you're likely not the first person they've done it to.

Most abusers were abused themselves. It's a cycle that has to be broken. Emphatic people are often victims of abuse, because they're told that family or friends will leave them if they involve law enforcement.

[Solarra]

The entire "I'll hurt myself/someone else/pet/property if you won't do what I ask" is the point that you absolutely must call law enforcement. It may not matter if YOU care about that person, but that person is now a direct threat to everyone they are around, and you're likely not the first person they've done it to.

Absolutely. I don't think anyone should try and handle things alone if it gets to that point.

[Zsolen]

Gamergate, is responsible for creating the bogeymen they feared, so it's no surprise that people who still think there is legitimacy in it, endorse extreme rightwing propaganda. Where Gamergate blames women, alt-right blames immigrants. It's all about creating a target to punch down on until it's accepted as truth, and people in the movement are fooled into either parting with their money or their lives like any other cult.

And there it is, inserting a political agenda onto a gaming forum. Please stop. This is not the place for anyone's propaganda.

[Alaray]

And there it is, inserting a political agenda onto a gaming forum. Please stop. This is not the place for anyone's propaganda.

"Political Agenda" is a buzzword that tries to give credence to a group of giant man-children who pitched a fit and threatened people. But uh. Yeah, go ahead and pump that one brain cell to think they were ever in the right, I guess?



For the topic at hand, though:

- Treating people like people isn't a political stance or some revolutionary controversial position.
- Abuse and harassment, and sexual abuse and harassment, are both morally reprehensible.
- If you think it's the victims' fault for allowing it, then you probably don't understand much about the topic at hand and think yourself a veritable expert on human psyche because you maybe read an article once.
- Yes, emotionally vulnerable and inexperienced people make bad decisions. But it's still the fault of the other person involved for taking advantage of it and actively causing harm. And knowingly causing harm.

No, it's not fun to be in the situation a lot of the women are/were in during this whole debacle with TMP. No, it's not obvious when it starts and by the time one comes to realize what was going on, it's already too late because odds are something was said, something was done, something was provided in the past when trust was high that can now be used against you. And no, it's not an easy decision to make when you're weighing two options and one of them encompasses keeping a position you heavily enjoy and see as an opportunity to branch off into larger things. It's also not fun to have your social circles threatened, your reputation and dignity threatened to keep you continuing with something you really want to be out of.

Yes, there's more cases of this. Yes, there's likely stuff like this happening in other communities in-game right now with other people involved.

Yes, putting these cases on display not only helps raise a sense of awareness that this can go on, but it can also provide information and tools to people who might eventually be able to use such tools and knowledge to avoid the situation.

Yes, this type of crap sticks with you for a long time. Yes, it makes most people feel emotionally charged on the topic (I know I'm withholding a lot of self-restraint right now).

No, calling someone a pos for doing this to multiple people is not "a witch hunt" especially when the information is fully on display. It's called holding someone accountable for their actions. Good god.

Yes, most of this is directly about TMP and that thing.

[Areic]

"Political Agenda" is a buzzword that tries to give credence to a group of giant man-children who pitched a fit and threatened people. But uh. Yeah, go ahead and pump that one brain cell to think they were ever in the right, I guess?
.

It literally was throwing in a political agenda though, the person went off topic of the sexual harassment to something else entirely. Gamergate and immigrants? The F$%^ does that have to do with the topic of sexual harassment. Gamergate was some cesspool of people on both sides, and the immigrant comment is just stirring up political crap on a game forum where it isn't needed. So the person is within full sense to tell them not to bring that crap to the forums

Nice work jumping right to insulting a the person and an entire group of supposed "man-children", very mature

[Alaray]

It literally was throwing in a political agenda though, the person went off topic of the sexual harassment to something else entirely. Gamergate and immigrants? The F$%^ does that have to do with the topic of sexual harassment. Gamergate was some cesspool of people on both sides, and the immigrant comment is just stirring up political crap on a game forum where it isn't needed. So the person is within full sense to tell them not to bring that crap to the forums

Nice work jumping right to insulting a the person and an entire group of supposed "man-children", very mature

Gamergate was a movement of men just harassing women constantly. That's all it was. (And yes, harassment is directly related to the topic... it's... it's like things don't survive in a vacuum!) It's also a stupid movement that served no real purpose.

And yes, they were a bunch of immature babies.

[Areic]

Gamergate was a movement of men just harassing women constantly. That's all it was. (And yes, harassment is directly related to the topic... it's... it's like things don't survive in a vacuum!) It's also a stupid movement that served no real purpose.

And yes, they were a bunch of immature babies.

It was a stupid movement from both sides. You had extreme left and extreme right s&^%ting all over each other that just /started/ because one guy got stupid about an ex-girlfriend. There was indeed no point to the movement, I'll agree with you on that, but both sides were less than great about it.

Both were massive, immature babies because that's how some people on the internet are no matter your political views or beliefs, that's all I'll say on the subject. Just like how you were massively immature telling someone to "pump that one brain cell" and calling an entire group of people man-children.

It's good to think things out before you say things.

[Alaray]

It's good to think things out before you say things.

I don't even care about "Left/Right" dichotomy. It was literally prompted as an attack on individuals who, otherwise, just posted articles/wrote articles/videos about games. It opened floodgates of harassment and actively trying to claim it has no right to be mentioned near a topic of harassment is, at base, a bad observation and statement.

Because, frankly, the discussion taking place in the thread is about something that doesn't just encompass XIV. It encompasses a lot more than that, it's a problem that persists and being unable to mention other things (while initially mentioned in conjunction with a general load of items) and responding to it with "ew politics in my game???" is the worst position one can take in a topic literally based around the topic of harassment. When it directly correlates, and is within the same sphere.

Yes, I stand by my statements. I don't really care if you think I'm mature or not, whatever, your opinion about my personal character is the least of my worries.

But it just seems you were fishing for something to feel upset about and chose to nitpick something that doesn't even matter, compared to the rest of the content of what I typed out. Which, I mean, points for... well I don't really know what the point is, other than saying that defense of that movement which is hardlined into thinking harassing is a-okay. And I will continued to refer to the participants of Gamergate how I will, because that's what they are.

[MoroMurasaki]

Gamergate was a movement of men just harassing women constantly. That's all it was. (And yes, harassment is directly related to the topic... it's... it's like things don't survive in a vacuum!) It's also a stupid movement that served no real purpose.

And yes, they were a bunch of immature babies.

Gamergate was about ethics in journalism and the idea that no one can write credible, unbiased reviews about something when they are also engaged in or have recently engaged in a sexual relationship with the creator of that thing.

This was eventually co-opted by a combination of internet trolls shaming a girl about her sex life (when really the men she slept with were the ones with the journalistic integrity issue) and ultimately some extra stupid feminists like Anita Sarkeesian who wanted to paint the gaming community as a whole like they are all people like the guy from this article.

Misrepresentation of Gamergate corrected, to move on.

This guy sounds like a scumbag. What I think people are getting stuck on is the idea that you can't sexually harrass a character. You can't, characters have no rights, but he wasn't sexually harrassing characters.

According to anecdotal evidence he was talking to people in voice chat and even engaged in an actual, physical sex with one woman. This is like saying if your boss calls you up on the phone tomorrow and tells you that your voice is sexy and he wants to do x, y and z with you it isn't sexual harassment. That's stupid, it's totally sexual harrassmemt. Take it from someone who worked in HR for years, that's the kind of behavior that gets people fired.

No, some random sending a /tell saying your glam is sexy is not sexual harrassmemt any more than a random catcall on the street is. If that was the sort of behavior this was about then I would have laughed and moved on.

The disturbing part of the story that's cropped up recently isn't some arbitrary wordplay in FC chat, rather it's about the emotional manipulation and solicitation of real-life information and personal photos. This man, if he actually did what was claimed, specifically went out of his way to make sure he had a wealth of power over these women. He stockpiled blackmail collateral while worming his way into their emotions then played on a fear of him commiting self-harm to stay there. For many of them he did this while also being their boss at The Moogle Post. It is a very, very different conversation than receiving a winkyface /tell about your butt looking cute.

The vast majority of people in this game will never receive any real sexual harrassment in this game but if these women's claims are true they're the unfortunate exceptions to that rule.

Bad people exist. Protect yourself as best you can. Don't make stupid choices like sending nudes. There is nothing that can be done to stop this guy from making another character and doing the same exact things again but if people are more ready to defend themselves against these sort of attacks he will at least have a harder time.

[AriaFairchild]

"Political Agenda" is a buzzword that tries to give credence to a group of giant man-children who pitched a fit and threatened people. But uh. Yeah, go ahead and pump that one brain cell to think they were ever in the right, I guess?

In particular, please do not use the forum as a means to name and shame other people when discussing the topic or personal experiences and consider the tone of your post in an effort to avoid being intentionally insulting, inflammatory, or harassing of other people.

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