The Zoe Quinn sex-for-reviews scandal

Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
figmentPez said:
I think an interesting parallel here would be the morbid humor often found in the medical profession. From what I'm told, many doctors and nurses tend to make jokes about death that would be highly offensive in most other workplaces. It's a coping mechanism that may be a healthy psychological response to a profession that encounters death far more often than the general population. If someone made those same kind of jokes while working at most desk jobs, they'd make the people around them horribly uncomfortable, quite possibly to the point of harassment. However, in a locker room or other private area, away from patients, in a hospital? Most likely there are going to be jokes made about death and illness.

Different workplaces have different standards. Figuring out when that environment crosses the line from familiar to dysfunctional is not always a clear line. The amount of crude humor that indicates something wrong at a large accounting firm is going to be lower than at a small tech company, which will, in turn, be much lower than what is to be expected in a theater company (because if you think a group performing Shakespeare isn't making dick jokes off-stage, as well as on-stage, then you don't know actors).
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I get the reasoning behind the morbid jokes. I don't see how that translates into sexist jokes at the workplace.

And crude humor isn't the problem. This is such a great example of privilege that I hope people don't miss it. Crude humor isn't the problem. The problem is that said crude humor doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists alongside a disparity of social power, which means that said crude humor will often roll downhill onto certain people who lack social power.

When you are in a position of social power the humor will often revolve around people no in said position. An easy example of this are in "boss" jokes. The boss does not exist in a position of social power, since it's one against many, so is often the butt of the jokes. This, obviously, isn't really a problem because they are in actual position of real power.

But let's say you are another person who does not have a lot of social power at work, like a woman or a minority. OR, maybe even better, let's say you are a Trekkie, or a nerd, or a fat person. Does it bother anyone here when someone makes a joke about 30 year old klingon speaking virgins?

This is something I find interesting about geekdom's inability to understand privilege. Many of us grew up in a high school where we were the butt of jokes said behind our backs or, possibly, right to our faces. Because we didn't rate, and there wasn't much we could do about it. As a culture many gamers grew up in oppressive cultures at the short end of privilege. Yet when we grew up we failed to see how that same imbalance might effect women, or minorities, even though there was far more serious and longstanding significance to the oppression they experienced. We're like people who start voting republican the moment they break six figures.

Anyways. People at work will make jokes about these people and we should all join in and laugh because, well, they're funny for one, but also because the recepients are in a position that lacks social power so there is little fear of consequences. And the women, the minorities, and the Klingon-lingual here these jokes and they resonate, hard, because they aren't just jokes, they are part of a much larger social power dynamic that marginilizes and disenfranchises them. And that same feeling of disenfranchisement then cycles back into how they react when they hear said jokes. Should I stand up and fight a simple joke? Should I risk losing even more social power by fighting this little affront?

Or should I just let it cut me one more time. It's just a small cut to my sense of self worth and power. Just one more small thing.

Inside all of them is the desire to stand up against it, but they hold that desire against the face of clearly antagonistic social pressures. And the "KA-PLAH!" dies in their throat.
 
Covar

Covar

Clearly a public shaming is the most appropriate action.

And I swear isn't this story/scenario a few years old? I'm certain we've all had the exact same arguements about the two conference attendees making a dongle wisecrack and losing their jobs for it.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
I think it's a particularly pertinent example with the current situation, because honestly, it was totally an over-reaction. Just like some of what is going on now. But I think it's worth recognizing that such over-reactions are not as cut and dry as people like to make them.

I've always had a hard time with Malcolm X myself. I saw his stance as being an over-reaction. The idea of the "white-devil" etc.. But those views don't exist in a vacuum, they exist because a group feels so marginilized that they lose control over the volume of their voice. In pretty much exactly the same way I might raise my voice at my wife. Which honestly I almost never do because she will always go further and I'm usually wrong, so there's never a good reason to do so, but that only illustrates the point further! When people are mad they make mistakes.

Which is why I try to be far more forgiving of someone like Malcom X or Sarkeesian or dongle-girl. They were/are not fighting fights of equal value, but they were in places where their own frustration had good reason to be repressed and built up to the point of overflowing in an unflattering manner.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
figmentPez said:
How is laughing at "dongle" a sexist joke?
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Because penises are terrifying weapons, and not at all the softest, most vulnerable part of a man's body.

On that note, it always mystified me how phalluses seem to take on this menacing, terrifying presence in western civilization. I read in a piece somewhere that women in africa laugh at how afraid of penises white women are, because to them, there's nothing squishier and more vulnerable to the slightest bit of pain than what a man keeps between his legs.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I forget which ancient culture believed their god had an enormous penis that had to be carried by dozens of men, the head of the penis crowned with giant horns.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

I said back then, and I say it now, the public shaming component was way out of line.

That doesn't change, however, that when someone is at a professional conference with people that they don't know, making sexual jokes is just about the stupidest thing a person could do.

I mean seriously, what are these conferences, glorified playgrounds?
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Bowielee said:
I said back then, and I say it now, the public shaming component was way out of line.

That doesn't change, however, that when someone is at a professional conference with people that they don't know, making sexual jokes is just about the stupidest thing a person could do.

I mean seriously, what are these conferences, glorified playgrounds?
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Maybe The Wolf of Wall Street gave some people the wrong idea.
Regardless of sexual whatever, it's just unprofessional, and if that's important to anyone at your company, your ass can be out on the sidewalk. I couldn't imagine doing something that stupid at my job and expecting to still have a job.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Zero Esc said:
I couldn't imagine doing something that stupid at my job and expecting to still have a job.
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Seriously. I don't even open this thread at work because it has sex in the title. I have to wonder what correlations exist between people's views on this topic and their place of employment.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
At an office Christmas party one year I won a pair of dancing novelty boobs that hang on the wall of my office and jiggle every time they detect someone close by while playing Rodney Carrington's "titties and beer."

They have been a big hit with just about everybody in the office male or female. Our female HR Director has even brought her kids by to look and point and laugh at them.

I'm not telling you guys this to prove any kind of point. Just giving you a window into the kind of workplaces that are out there.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
That's not dissimilar to how things have been historically in the O&G/refinery world up until recently. Except the shit wasn't really funny. Things like control board operators reading porn mags in front of women, or calling the Indian a raghead or sand n****er. The former happened a while ago, she was one of three women in a crew of 100+ and the shit they did to her was appalling. The latter is currently happening to a guy a know who works on-site in west texas somewhere.

If I had to choose between overly restrictive workplaces or that, I would take the overly restrictive place. Fuck that shit. Opens you up for justified lawsuits and runs off good talent.

Don't get me wrong, it's definitely a false dichotomy. You can have a workplace which has more crude sensibilities and everyone is ok with it. But there are people that will just continue to push the envelope when given any freedom, and because of them shit needs to be locked down. All it would take in Gas's example is one guy who saw the boobs and thought that mean it was ok to give out a dildo next year.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Sometimes people just don realize they're being assholes, and when dealing with a lopsided power dynamic this gets real awkward, because people lacking power may not provide the appropriate feedback to let someone know they're being an asshole. Privelege, or lack thereof, may subvert the necessary social feedback loops necessary to control behavior.
 
Null

Null

And then there's workplaces where the guy in charge is the biggest asshole, and he retaliates to any perceived criticisms, even when it leads to multiple lawsuits that drag on for years...
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
PatrThom said:
When caught, they get in trouble for doing stuff like that, too.
http://jonathanturley.org/2014/04/2...ne-records-them-mocking-his-unconscious-body/
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They got in trouble for making jokes at a patient's expense. Not simply for making morbid jokes, and it wasn't co-workers who sued them for making a hostile work environment. That's a very different situation. The gap between making a pun about corpuscles, or something like that, and making derogatory remarks about a patient is pretty damn huge.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
So apparently Zoe is now in a slap fight with Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. He sent out a blanket call to artists to get resumes and one of the artists had drawn a pretty offensive comic of her. She took it that he was trying to specifically hire this artist.

Anyways, I think I've made my views about this whole thing pretty clear, but god damn Quinn herself seems like a real piece of work. Between this one and the photographer she screwed over she is really hurting her image which sadly hurts her associated message.

Seriously though Stardock has to be one of the last companies you would ever want to go after like this.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

He's apparently asked her to send in her resume before as well, long before any of this happened... so it's not like he's ignored her in the past ether.
 
Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

Jay said:
This is why most of the men died when the Titanic sank.

Women and children first because men deserve a little quiet time before the ship sinks.
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letting women go instead of men is incredibly sexist and also completely the men's fault for all that queasy chivalry bullshit
 
Null

Null

That's a very weird fight to pick.

ZQ is mentally becoming sort of the gaming developer version of Jose Canseco - someone who points out a real problem in their industry that a lot of people aren't aware of or don't want to be aware of, but is such an asshole and so not exactly innocent themselves, that they kind of damage any progress made against the problem by their very involvement.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Charlie Don't Surf said:
this is casual misogyny at worst and macho bullshit at best
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I'm not surprised you missed the point here, since you and Zoe seem to both share the same skill of damaging your own cause by generally behaving like a child.

Also, way to be so euro-centric in your understanding of the term slap fight you racist shitlord:

 
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