decado

I don't think it will ever happen: http://thegwumps.blogspot.com/2011/10/gamers-cant-handle-imperium.html

hmmm. hate to do this, but seems necessary. your reasoning were used quite frequently as an excuse to prolong the disparate treatment o' blacks and asians and other minority groups in this country. You are supposing that my idea is prescriptive, when in fact I think it is descriptive. I'm not making a value judgement. I'm making an observation. so was aristotle and shockley. they would say that they weren't making value judgments. they were wrong, of course. Nonsense. The person making the judgement decides if it is a value judgement. You cannot simply graft that motive onto someone. You can accuse them of lying, but that's about it.

No. And anyone who makes that argument is an asshatted moron.

hmmm. hate to do this, but seems necessary. your reasoning were used quite frequently as an excuse to prolong the disparate treatment o' blacks and asians and other minority groups in this country. You are supposing that my idea is prescriptive, when in fact I think it is descriptive. I'm not making a value judgement. I'm making an observation.

Well your original argument wasn't clear. In any regard, I will grant you that most white people do not face any real harmful behavior because of their whiteness. But males? They get a boatload of it. Men are subjected to a ton of real, actual abuse on a daily basis. In fact, it makes more sense to say that the abuse they receive is precisely because they are men. The problem with modern narratives regarding sexism is that people look at the top and see men. And it is true, there are more men at the top of everything: more men in positions of power, more men in government, more men CEOs, and more men as managers or professors or what have you. But what many people fail to do after looking up is to look down. And in the bottom rungs of society you will find far more men than women. More men in prison, more men die on the job, more men die from treatable illnesses, more men die in combat, etc. The list goes on. It is my belief that a lot of these trends are dictated by our biology and the way we have evolved, since human males evolved to engage in aggressive, risk-taking behavior (thanks, testosterone!). I tend to view our position in society (however great or poor it may be) as an expression of our innate qualities as males, which are determined by hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure. It is not so easy, then, to just throw that stuff away to conform to the demands of society. Always remember that it is only possible to have these kinds of conversations because the civilizations that allow them were built with the blood of reckless, risk-taking men, most of whom died horribly on the field of battle (or in prison, or were murdered by their governments, etc). And in some sense, they only persist because that same class of male -- the reckless, risk-taking kind -- has been socially coerced into behaving himself by the promise of regular sex (marriage) and a share of the wealth (economic opportunity). Strip that away, and I have a feeling that we would all of us very quickly begin to resemble our wild-west ancestors, settling fights with bloodshed and taking whatever we can grab. In other words, I subscribe to the Robert E. Howard School of Anthropology: Civilization is nothing more than a thin veneer that barely covers humanity's animal traits. Take that veneer away, and we'll be splitting skulls like the our Cimmerian forefathers.

Yes, we can really say that. And this is the kind of nonsense from "the other side" that makes males look ridiculous. Most men aren't getting rape threats for daring to make a post about video games. You lose nothing by admitting this, and in fact your position is strengthened for conceding what is (eventually) a trivial point that everyone else already believes anyway. There are only two ways this stuff is going to end: 1) We eradicate abuse from the internet 2) We change our attitudes about it. 1 is never going to happen, not unless we fundamentally destroy the very characteristics of the internet that make it valuable to us. So 2 is what we have to do. Changing our attitudes about online abuse involves several things: A) Admitting that it happens B) Admitting that it happens to women in a particularly vicious way C) Remaining measured and calm in our attempts to fix the problem, which includes: I) Understanding that some people will always think their feelings are the most important thing in the world II) Understanding it is okay to ignore these people, because you will never be able to get through to them III) Understanding that, unless you are talking about children and teenagers, online abuse is not even in the same ballpark as actual, physical abuse. At the end of the day, you always have the option to turn off the screen and walk away. In essence, the solution is to keep things in perspective and not throw your freedoms of expression under the bus to salve the feelings of those who are offended. On this Earth, nobody has the right to not be offended. You cannot create standards of decency by catering to weaklings.

Nah. They face less discrimination, certainly. But as to who faces "derogatory" and "dehumanizing" treatment? How can you even being to quantify that? "Specific forms" is my real point there. I'm not contesting for a single second that everyone in the world can be the target of terrible things done by other people. But how many forms of derogatory and dehumanizing treatment have specifically targeted the straight white male? Compared to, say, black people, or gay men? That's what I'm getting at. This doesn't really help your argument, though. Every white male who has ever been through US military bootcamp has been dehumanized and faced with derogatory comments. Every white male who has been through high school in the United States has been dehumanized and faced derogatory comments. You keep using these two words, but I think you want to use other words. You're basically saying that white men don't get insulted or treated like ****. Of course they do, and it is usually from other white males. Focusing on this is waste of time and effort. You are actually insulting the intelligence of people who follow and study the issues of sexism and misogyny if you are suggesting that on an average men go through the same amount of abuse, either physical or verbal, that many women are subjected to in real life and the Internet 1) How is physical abuse possible over the internet? Did you mean to type that? 2) If you are going to count the "amount of abuse" (which is a thing I don't think you can do), I would love to see how you can say one group gets more abuse than another. We can certainly say that women get abuse that is worse in nature, and a lot more vicious, but you can't really say anything about "amount." It is ridiculous to even try. The internet is a finely oiled hate machine, everyone gets abused. 3) If you want to talk about who gets abused more physically, let's look at the crime statistics. They clearly show that men are more often the victims of physical violence, at least in the US. So using that metric is probably not advantageous to your position. 4) I don't give a single, solitary sh!t about who I insult, or their supposed intelligence.

Nah. They face less discrimination, certainly. But as to who faces "derogatory" and "dehumanizing" treatment? How can you even being to quantify that? "Specific forms" is my real point there. I'm not contesting for a single second that everyone in the world can be the target of terrible things done by other people. But how many forms of derogatory and dehumanizing treatment have specifically targeted the straight white male? Compared to, say, black people, or gay men? That's what I'm getting at. This doesn't really help your argument, though. Every white male who has ever been through US military bootcamp has been dehumanized and faced with derogatory comments. Every white male who has been through high school in the United States has been dehumanized and faced derogatory comments. You keep using these two words, but I think you want to use other words. You're basically saying that white men don't get insulted or treated like ****. Of course they do, and it is usually from other white males. Focusing on this is waste of time and effort.

In my view, complaining about this stuff is just as dumb as those people who whine about feeling "unsafe" on the internet. White dudes have it pretty easy on this Planet Earth. People who are upset about that have a legitimate grievance. And they are allowed to have that grievance without prefacing their remarks so as not to hurt your feelings. But what flows equally from that grievance is the understanding that, when it comes to issues like this, your delivery is just as important as the content. Very few people actually run around calling white men "devils" and they are usually made fun of by everyone else. Sure, certain radicalized idiots might find an internet forum where they can indulge this behavior without fear of being called on it, but for the most part these people cannot act that way and get away with it. All of this whining about it makes a person look like a petulant crybaby. I'm of the opinion that everybody -- men, women, etc -- should harden the eff up and stop complaining about their goddamn feelings all the time. I don't care about your feelings, and I don't want you to care about my feelings. Let's care about things that are actual and verifiable and measurable, and leave feelings for bedtime.

Nah. They face less discrimination, certainly. But as to who faces "derogatory" and "dehumanizing" treatment? How can you even being to quantify that?

No. See, what you're not understanding here is that (assuming you are male yourself) men already predominate. What is ensured through 'safe spaces' is that there is a place outside of that for people to feel safe. (The same applies to LGBTQIA groups, or in other circumstances to non-white individuals. It's not about "special clubs", it's about being protected from the abuses and threats that society in general poses.) You don't need a club of your own.Yo You need to change your behaviour, and that of fellow men, so that people don't feel the need to have a separate safe space. Seriously, the response to "These people don't feel safe in the world at large" should not be "BUT HOW COME THEY GET-". It should be working out why they feel that way and then trying to fix the flaws in the system. (& once you've done that, I think you'll find you will get a "successful mixed virtual society". As well as a much happier and friendlier one, I reckon. Diminished bigotry and abuse benefits everyone, since it shows there's no tolerance for that sort of obnoxious harmful behaviour in the community.) (As a disclaimer, I'm a white cis male that likes women. So I'm pretty much the archetype of the privileged gamer myself.) First of all, the concept of a "Safe Space" on the internet is hilarious. If you feel "unsafe" on the internet, I submit to you that you have a problem that all of the safe spaces in the world is never going to fix. Second and more importantly, just because someone -- or a group of someones -- has a feeling, doesn't mean that feeling is valid, or even worth paying attention to. This is harsh, I know, but it is reality. A million people can complain about feeling "unsafe" on the internet, but the first question we should ask is not "How do we make these people feel safe?!" but "What the hell does that even mean?" Feelings are not arguments. Feelings are not proof of a systemic problem. Feelings are not enough to demand compliance to a way of doing things. Feelings are feelings, and we all have them every day, and many of them are quite dumb and irrational. Just because a bunch of people all have the same feeling and are vocalizing it on the internet doesn't make that feeling any less dumb or any less irrational.

Yeah. I've been here a while. I tend to split my time between here and RPG Codex. But lately I haven't been posting much of anywhere, because of RL stuff. But I always check in once a day, if only to get psyched for PoE updates. ETA: Also, my primary interest is in following PoE, but I find I can only do that for so long (that is, follow a game that isn't released yet) before I get burned out. That's partly why I stopped following WL2 after finishing up on the veteran's advisory panel. I just want to play the goddamn game already. So I have to be careful how many discussions I get into about this or that because I can get bored/frustrated. Like, the last PoE thread I participated in was some OP along the lines of "Are we getting the game we were promised?!!" or something similar. That's the kind of crap that only comes from people with over active imaginations.

Staying?

I've noticed that a cultures that doesn't value free speech runs the risk of creating crybabies and over-sensitive jerks.

Well, that's the only time you should hear about it. This is kind of like saying "The only time I hear about prison sentences is when someone is going to jail." Of course that's when you hear about them: that's when they're relevant. Likewise, you hear a lot about freedom of speech issues when there is a particularly contentious case floating around the media, precisely because it is contentious. You don't hear about free speech most other times because there isn't much to say about it: we enjoy the freedom of expression, and we use it every day. It is uneventful. You are mixing up a lot of stuff, here. First of all, you can hear plenty of Americans voicing their opinions on both of those issues (and plenty others) who fall on both sides of the line. But you seem to be confusing "Freedom of Speech" with a host of other laws and regulations. Nobody is tackling the Edward Snowden revelations under the banner of free speech, because that really isn't about speech (or, more accurately, freedom of the press). It is about whistleblowing, spying, and the lengths to which a government should be allowed to snoop on their citizens. It is not a 1st Amendment issue, it is a (specifically) 4th amendment issue. The UK didn't need a Patriot Act. You guys already have surveillance cameras everywhere.