The Adventures of Tobasco da Gama

First thing’s first. “Assault” is not the right term for this, but only because it carries a specific legal meaning that requires physical contact. But that doesn’t justify waving away the situation I’m about to discuss as no big deal, because it is.

The Escapist has a news post entitled “Female Gamer ‘Sexually Assaulted’ While Playing PS3“. According to the original posting on the Playstation forum, a female player (the poster’s roommate) was harassed by another, male player, who insisted on following her avatar around and crouching behind her, as if staring at her ass. He didn’t stop after being asked to stop or after the female player (and others present) threatened to report him, which she and several others eventually did.

While it may not fall under the legal definition of assault, this is clearly constitutes harassment, and the content of the harassment was equally clearly sexual in nature and, most importantly, directed toward the target solely because she was a female playing a female avatar. That’s definitely the key part. I, against my better judgment, decided to read the comments on The Escapist article, and of course found a bunch of dudes trying to play the whole thing off as a harmless gag and comparing the incident to “teabagging” in Halo. It’s actually a good comparison, but for a reason that only serves to underline the importance of the incident.

It’s quite obvious that “teabagging” opponents in online games is a form of humiliation intended to express dominance over the defeated player. I’m a little ambivalent towards this in the context of a competitive game, since often trash talking can be part of the fun. (See: the “taunts” in TF2 and a lot of other multiplater games.) The difference here is two-fold: First, this occurred in a social game, not a competitive game, so dominance displays are at the very least out of place and, frankly, would be considered quite rude even if the interaction involved two male or two female players. Which leads into the second, more important point.

The incident didn’t involve two male players, it involved a male player harassing a female player. We don’t have a full chat log, but there’s no reason to think that the female player did anything to provoke the harassment other than committing the oh-so-grave crime of being a woman on the internet. In this context, the harassers behaviour is clearly equivalent to real-life catcalling, in that the whole point is to make the target feel vulnerable and powerless. And such harassment must also be understood as an attack on an entire group of people, not just the specific target, since the target is singled out solely as a member of the group under attack, rather than for any individual characteristics.

This slightly old post by Amanda Marcotte illustrates the principle nicely. The relevant bit:

Telling a woman you want to drink from her tits, yelling “Nice ass!” at her from a car, or otherwise pretending to compliment a woman while actually conveying the information that she is a piece of meat (in contrast to men, who are people) is supposed to offend. However, the reaction of the woman is strictly controlled by it. Her offense absolutely must take the form of staring at her feet, properly ashamed of being born female. If she rejects the misogynist assessment of women and reacts with anger, then she is accused of having no sense of humor or not being able to take a compliment.

The same thing is at play in the comment section at The Escapist. There are a lot of people saying, essentially, “Stop making a big deal, just live with it”, which can be considered a subset of the “no sense of humour” dismissal. Why, exactly, shouldn’t this player get upset? Why shouldn’t she try to take action against the harasser? Why is the only acceptable course of action to either accept the idea of being insulted regularly (solely for being a woman) or to leave? Why can’t she simply enjoy a social experience online with the expectation — enjoyed by all of the men saying that this harassment isn’t a big deal — that she won’t be harassed without actually doing something to deserve it?

A minor concluding point. The Escapist article includes this quote from a Dr. Jessica Wolfendale: “A lot of people in these games don’t draw a strong distinction between the avatar and themselves. When you read accounts of people who are involved with [multiplayer] games, they say things like ‘I was hurt’ and ‘I was insulted’ when they are talking about attacks on their avatar.” Of course, drawing a strong connection between the avatar and the player can be considered the entire point behind online social games like PS3 Home. It’s arguable whether this applies to games in general; for some, especially the ones that include robust customisation options, it definitely does, for others (e.g., ones with a strongly defined and distinctive main character) it probably doesn’t.

P.s.: Here’s some bonus reading that’s relevant but didn’t fit into the main post nicely: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/the_limits_of_anti_violence_slogans/

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 13:02 and is filed under Feminism, Jackassery, People Who Should Be Set On Fire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.