Sexual harassment

[WaffleFaerie]

I don't think being an adult is only about being fully developed, but being developed enough that your parents shouldn't have to take responsibility for your actions anymore. A child behaving badly, committing crime or doing stupid things is the parents' fault. When it's adults doing those things it's their own fault.

I'm sorry, I was being a little light-hearted and silly with that comment. It's a delicate job, bringing levity into such a gloomy thread about such a grave topic, and perhaps that was a mistake on my part. I wasn't really trying to address the legitimacy of legal age of majority or criminal responsibility, I just wanted to refute the idea presented by Zsolen that an 18-year-old should just "know better" than to be a victim of an online abuser simply by virtue of being 18. I can't say I would have known better at that age, that's all.

You still know better by 18 and you were an adult at 18. You would know something is wrong. Growing up sheltered doesn't remove basic instinct.

I really don't feel like Googling missing and murdered girls over 18 to use as evidence against this, so I'm just going to exit the thread.

[Miyha]

First thing's first: as someone who has been in the exact same place as the woman mentioned in the story from the beginning of the thread, it is sickening that people find that to be "funny" and "just FC drama". For someone in an extremely vulnerable state, something like that can consume your life. I was in a relationship like that when I was playing another game and seriously struggling with my mental health. It took me two years to recover from that. Your "LOL FC DRAMA" sentiment is one reason the #MeToo movement took off in the first place: plenty of people just flat out dismiss women (and men even more so, imo) who claim sexual harassment and/or abuse. If you find that article "funny", you are the scum of the earth and don't deserve to reproduce. Fight me.

Anyway...

As a female in the MMO world, aside from that one intensely negative experience (which was ultimately something I got myself into and I just pray to the gods that sick bastard doesn't prey on another similarly vulnerable woman, online OR irl), I really haven't encountered anything that can't be solved by simply blacklisting someone. Honestly, I haven't had many issues with harassment at all in any of the games I've played. :/ It could be because a lot of people assume I'm a dude until they hear my voice because of the way I type; even after finding out I'm female, nothing really changes. I can only think of one instance in which someone began treating me differently after finding out that I was female, but there again, I distanced myself from that individual and problem solved.

Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe I naturally exude an air of "don't mess with me" now. Or, maybe the way women are treated in the gaming community is beginning to change. Sure, you have things like GamerGate several years ago, and there's definitely still progress that needs to be made. (That's the case everywhere though; not just in the gaming community.) In general, however, I would say that sexual harassment in-game is no more prominent than it may be irl; and irl, you don't have a blacklist. :P (Unless a restraining order counts? Prison? Lol...)

TL;DR: People who find a woman's account of abuse to be "funny" or "just drama" are part of the problem. With regards to harassment in general, keep calm and block on.

[Melichoir]

snip

Maybe I was a bit blunt and tactless in the headslap, but I wasnt saying "Tough love, sucks to suck!" and not give support or help. I was attempting to illustrate that yeah, you need to be ensuring when people make mistakes that they know the lesson. Cause Trauma, often enough, distorts peoples perceptions of the situation, and can leave people fixating on the wrong aspects.


This is not only why people who get help dont just get told "Its all better and its not your fault," but help people unpack the entirety of the situation. To not only understand yeah, theyre a victim of something, but also what actually lead to the situation. Getting to that isnt easy, cause you cant just say "Welp, this is why. Youre a dummy." Getting htem to look at something and be like "Ok, this was a bad judgement call, and heres why I made that call, and what can I do with it going forward" is what is necessary. That doesnt happen overnight or instantly, Nor is it getting the person to say "Its all my fault. " Its a tricky dance between understanding what lead to what and self blame. Its the appropriate way to go rather than the current option I see far to often. The "You did nothing wrong, youre a victim, you dont have to change or evaluate your actions, the world needs to change so you dont have to."

Its a fairy tale way of looking at the world that relieves all responsibility from the victim. They dont have to learn, or change, or address something. No, its the world who has to be nicer. This doesnt help victims or potential victims.

[Miyha]

Its a fairy tale way of looking at the world that relieves all responsibility from the victim. They dont have to learn, or change, or address something. No, its the world who has to be nicer. This doesnt help victims or potential victims.

Just quoting this because it really is something profound that I only realized after the extensive trauma therapy I've had to go through, not just from the relationship I mentioned above.

To supplement that, you'll notice a pattern where a lot of people who get taken advantage of by predators like the aforementioned "prominent community figure" also have their own mental health struggles and other issues that make them prime targets. They have a lot of faults, and it's these faults that make them easy targets for abuse and manipulation. Sometimes one doesn't even realize it's a problem until they're put into the scenario of a relationship like that, experience that kind of trauma, then are plopped into trauma therapy; I promise you, your therapist will (or should, if they're doing their job correctly) make you own your sh*t and work on cleaning up your side of the fence as a major part of recovery.

It's not anyone's fault when they're victims of abuse; but they do have to take a step back, look at why they got themselves into that situation, why they stayed, and what they can do differently to avoid similar instances in the future. With the insight they gain, perhaps they could help prevent someone else's suffering as well. I know that's what I try to do.

[Rogatum]

@Rogatum: You know that something like depression which can turn into something much worse, is an illness that is far from rational? I know of people that went through it and said that they would have never believed how much this could change you and how they never had thought that they would have certain thoughts while they suffered from it. Thats why its always important that someone is under watchful eyes if they get medicine against it because it can increase it. I am just saying that people need to be tactful with dealing with such a situation. Maybe some can take it, maybe some dont. Thus saying that you always should point out the things that they did wrong might not be the best and make it worse. In the end nothing stops someone from talking about this when the worst passed.

As others have mentioned and I am in agreement I do not think we should sugarcoat or set aside cases of poor judgement or mistakes. I am not saying getting mugged is the same as sexual abuse, but I tend to feel that a mistake is a mistake, executing poor judgment is executing poor judgement. Maybe I am just not expressing myself properly, I am not saying we should place all the blame on the victim, but they "need" to understand that if their actions played a role which lend them to a certain situation. We should not try to and say they are 100% to blame, but is the message we want to send to people is that there was nothing they could have done that could have prevented the situation? Overall I think my issue is if we start to pick and choosing which situations are appropriate to point out mistakes we get into areas as to where we draw the line. One example since someone in this thread brought up kidnapping. At the core what is different between a parent looking away for one brief moment the kid gets taken and is hurt vs a parent looking away and the kid ends up in a place they should not be and gets hurt. Some might view the kidnapping as different since the kid was taken, and the action of the child getting hurt was because of the person that took the kid. At at the core I feel they are the product of an inattentive parent, though most would call me insensitive for calling out the parents in former. I willing to bet most would put the blame on the parents for the latter though.

If that makes sense.

[BillyKaplan]

is the message we want to send to people is that there was nothing they could have done that could have prevented the situation? [..] Overall I think my issue is if we start to pick and choosing which situations are appropriate to point out mistakes we get into areas as to where we draw the line

I don't think anyone's saying that first part, but by virtue of the discussion everyone tilts harder into the extremes of their stances so it comes off like that. Lessons absolutely should be learned and applied moving forward. And if someone knows and still repeats those mistakes, there's room to discuss why that happens to them and that's another thing that needs to be addressed.
But it's subjective as all hell. I was assaulted by someone I've known and trusted for over a decade. Friends who knew about him absolutely learned to warn people from him now that it happened to me, because it's worth it more than the doubts of "will they believe me?" "will they be mad at me?" because at least then they'd have done what they could. But what is there for me to learn other than to never get intimate with other people?
Setting that aside, let's look at the healing process for a moment. Yes, people should learn from what happened if there's anything to learn there. But not everyone are wired the same. For some people, being told "next time do this and that", can easily translate into "you should've-" and that translates into guilt and self blame that can hold back their progress.
Some people can stand to be told what they did wrong and learn from it. They might truly be empowered by it. Others are already painfully aware, so the last thing they need is to be reminded of what they did wrong. Every recovery should be considered carefully on its own, taking into account the individual and circumstances. That's why we have literally entire professions dedicated to therapy and mental studies, because no two people are the same.

[Alleo]

I think this is the core of our disagreement - I don't believe in sugarcoating the truth when it comes to something this important. Facts don't care about your feelings and the fact of the matter is if you engage in behavior like what has come out of the TMP story (specifically sending nude photos or video to someone else, much less someome you've never even met) you have made a huge mistake even if nothing bad comes of it.

Because often those vicitms are already at a bad place in their life before this happens, trust a person for months, do one mistake (like you only really need to sent one picture) and then are confronted with other people they trusted that said that this is just drama and they should just take it, have the abuser say to them that he/she might kill himself if they go and thanks to all the actions over time they might not have many people left that they can confine into. All of this while already suffering from depression and other attacks. IMO it is not good to go to them and start to blame them for it too. You dont need to sugarcoat anything, you simply just need to be there for them and if that all is over, you can still talk about the mistakes. But imo not when the person is already at their worst place.

Also again its always easy from the outside and as a hindsight to point out the bad stuff. But those people often dont even notice these things because they trust the person and because the person tries everything to have their trust.

We should not try to and say they are 100% to blame, but is the message we want to send to people is that there was nothing they could have done that could have prevented the situation?

We can go around and try to teach those that did not have anything happen to them, how to avoid it. Give them the signs that could help them identify it and we could also reach out our hand and say that people can come to us if they need advise and not react like its just drama and funny. That would help beforehand but will never 100% be secure. But what does it help the person that already went through this? They have already learned the hard way how it happened and its like someone touching fire. Once you did that, you will probably never do that again and also know much better than any other person why it happened. (Because there is no one true way to solve this, since people are so different.) So that person imo already knows quite good what happened, what they did do wrong and will not want to go through that again. Thus the talk about "how you should not get into that situation" is first already too late and probably just talking about stuff that they know already. Thus imo its better to just give them a helping hand, because the time afterwards is probably one of the hardest. And if that is all done and they are at a better health, you could still talk to them if they want to.

[Zsolen]

I really don't feel like Googling missing and murdered girls over 18 to use as evidence against this, so I'm just going to exit the thread.

They should have been more cautious. There are a lot of terrible people out there. They also aren't girls at that point.

[MoroMurasaki]

Because often those vicitms are already at a bad place in their life before this happens, trust a person for months, do one mistake (like you only really need to sent one picture) and then are confronted with other people they trusted that said that this is just drama and they should just take it, have the abuser say to them that he/she might kill himself if they go and thanks to all the actions over time they might not have many people left that they can confine into. All of this while already suffering from depression and other attacks. IMO it is not good to go to them and start to blame them for it too. You dont need to sugarcoat anything, you simply just need to be there for them and if that all is over, you can still talk about the mistakes. But imo not when the person is already at their worst place.

Also again its always easy from the outside and as a hindsight to point out the bad stuff. But those people often dont even notice these things because they trust the person and because the person tries everything to have their trust.

I don't mean to be dismissive but none of what you said here has literally any bearing on what we're talking about.

Support and criticism are not mutually exclusive, in fact I would say the best support is almost always accompanied by some constructive criticism. Hearing "I love you" from someone who you likely already know cares about you is of minimal consequence in the long run. I'm not ignoring that people still need that kind of reassurance in the moments following a traumatic experience, simply stating that it isn't the people offering them who are giving the best or most useful support.

You seem to have this misconception that a victim of abuse accepting responsibility for their own safety somehow also adds blame to them or lessens the burden of blame on the abuser. The abuser is still 100% to blame for the abuse, it would not happen without them. Asking the victim to examine their actions and understand mistakes that they made does not mean you don't understand that.

Since you seem so focused on people being in such a delicare state of mental health after such an experience I ask you this as well - they are very vulnerable at that point, right? So if everyone just smothers them with love and affection and they don't understand that they've done something wrong what's to stop the same situation from arising again immediately after? Those who want to take advantage of others flock to emotionally unstable people.

I watched this happen to my mom as a kid - we were in a domestic violence shelter from one boyfriend of hers and she would meet a guy, move out into his house and repeat. Instead of focusing on herself all she seemed to get ingrained in her mind was that men are bad, not that perhaps she wasn't properly vetting the men she chose to immediately enter committed relationships with and rely on. No one called her on her mistakes until the third go around and it was me at 13 years old.

People learning from their mistakes is often the only bit of good to come out of any bad situation and they can't be left to their own devices for that to work. Introspection is not a natural state of being, especially not the sort that examines personal error after an already traumatic experience. Your brain wants to insulate you from the bad thoughts naturally, this is why victims of forcible rape or extreme physical trauma often don't have clear memory of the incedents. All of this contributes to the need to force that uncomfortable self examination, especially when it can be most impactful.

[BillyKaplan]

Support and criticism are not mutually exclusive, in fact I would say the best support is almost always accompanied by some constructive criticism.

Something we all seem to agree on?

You dont need to sugarcoat anything, you simply just need to be there for them and if that all is over, you can still talk about the mistakes. But imo not when the person is already at their worst place.

Alleo didn't say not to criticize, nor did they say to neglect retrospection. They're stressing the need to take into consideration the timing.

You seem to have this misconception that a victim of abuse accepting responsibility for their own safety somehow also adds blame to them or lessens the burden of blame on the abuser. The abuser is still 100% to blame for the abuse, it would not happen without them. Asking the victim to examine their actions and understand mistakes that they made does not mean you don't understand that.

But is the victim in a state of mind where they can understand that? Or is it too soon in their healing progress, that it will be taken the wrong way? That's also something to take into consideration that doesn't negate either approach.

they don't understand that they've done something wrong

Assumption. Again, subjective depending on case. You're generalizing. Not all victims will be blind to their own mistakes and need someone on the outside to enlighten them.