Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Zero tolerance policies on desk decoration also save HR from protracted discussions on what constitutes offensive
Nobody wants a two hour argument on why the Venus de Milo is acceptable when a clothed schoolgirl being penetrated by an octopus isn't (or vice versa), or how much cleavage is too much, etc
I feel like huge swaths of MeToo have been an abject lesson in why letting people decide what is and is not appropriate is not the smart play.
Okay, but taken at face value there is literally no other alternative. The best anyone can do is try to create or join groups that agree with them on what is and is not appropriate behavior.
Or actually commit to a standard that's built around being proactively inclusive and actually pursuing change when someone brings up a lack of comfort.
You don't really need nuance until you get to the question of how much you should accommodate extremely strict cultural practices, like bans on graven images or personal modesty.
...and the standard would still be "people decid[ing] what is and is not appropriate". It's not like these things are dictated from on high.
I'm not disagreeing with you! There should be standards! Just, standards are always made by people, so saying it's not a good idea to let people decide is a nonsensical statement.
Sure, but it's not super hard to figure out the context you're living in unless something is impacting your judgement of social norms and basic empathy.
Humans being different doesn't mean humans can't read the dang room.
Like, I think female-presenting nipples are fine. But I recognize that I'm surrounded by prudes and creeps.
Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
Also like... the treatment of women and men is very very different (and unfair). So sometimes things that are OK from one side aren't of you switch the gender.
Not that men can't be discriminated against or be harassed or anything, but overall patterns matter.
Zero tolerance policies on desk decoration also save HR from protracted discussions on what constitutes offensive
Nobody wants a two hour argument on why the Venus de Milo is acceptable when a clothed schoolgirl being penetrated by an octopus isn't (or vice versa), or how much cleavage is too much, etc
Aahh yes, the sterile Flex workplace, the ideal environment to be creative in.
Not only does it sap the will to live out of you, it is also a constant reminder that your are but a cog in the machine, and can be replaced within 10 minutes.
Bonus points if there if you have no fixed desk, and everyday you just get assigned a random empty one.
Feel free to change your desktop wallpaper
To any of the seven pre-approved images
I actually got talked to about changing my wallpaper (I think I had some space wallpaper or something)
I've also been talked to about not wearing clothing with the company logo enough...in a jokey joke kind of "We're totally not joking haha" kind of way
Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
Also like... the treatment of women and men is very very different (and unfair). So sometimes things that are OK from one side aren't of you switch the gender.
Not that men can't be discriminated against or be harassed or anything, but overall patterns matter.
Are semi-nude calendars one of those things? I can't really see a reasonable rationale under which such calendars of one gender are considered reasonable workplace decor but calendars of the other are not.
Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
Also like... the treatment of women and men is very very different (and unfair). So sometimes things that are OK from one side aren't of you switch the gender.
Not that men can't be discriminated against or be harassed or anything, but overall patterns matter.
Are semi-nude calendars one of those things? I can't really see a reasonable rationale under which such calendars of one gender are considered reasonable workplace decor but calendars of the other are not.
If anyone has discomfort towards it, neither is okay- And as people are slow to voice discomfort at the workplace, especially towards superiors, it really should just not be done at all.
But of course, it's always about the power dynamic, too. Women have been oppressed in the workplace (and everywhere else..) for a long, long time in many cultures, so you're going to get a "beating up" vs "beating down" situation.
Most men wouldn't be annoyed by a nude male calendar, because they inherently don't feel oppressed, because their gender wasn't oppressed, and don't see a calendar like this as another piece of objectification normalization.
Women, on the other hand, have millennia of oppression, objectification and abuse, which of course still continues to that day.
Of course gender roles are actually bad and oppressive to both men and women, because they press both in a mold built by our ancestors, but when the abused becomes the abuser, themselves, you still need to protect the one being abused currently, before taking on the system of abuse
Riot signs controversial sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia city project
While simultaneously using LGBTQ+ logo.
The deal will see Neom become the main partner for the LEC's summer season and sponsor a new "Oracle Lens" segment of the live broadcast, which along with a similar partnership with CS:GO tournament BLAST, should bring the project a fair amount of exposure. Neom is a cross-border city project planned for construction in the Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia. Backed by both the Saudi Arabian state and international investors, the megacity is supposed to represent the future of humanity, with plans made by Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman including flying cars, robot dinosaurs and a giant artificial moon (via Wall Street Journal [paywall]). Costing £400bn to complete, the city-state will cover an area the size of Belgium.
There appears to be a far darker side to this high-tech city, however, as reports allege Saudi authorities are removing and even killing Huwaiti tribe members to make way for the project (via The Guardian). Following the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an act the CIA attributed to Salman, the crown prince allegedly told colleagues that "no one will invest [in the project] for years" due to the international outcry that followed (via The Financial Times [paywall]).
This is the sort of thing I absolutely expect from Riot.
The project they are getting sponsored by is the sort of horrific propaganda boondoggle that no company should want to touch with a 100 foot pole.
Riot has backed down on this within the day, after outcry from all sorts of sources, including the LEC casters (Who as far as i can tell, were PISSED about this).
So... Cool, you backed down, why the fuck did it happen in the first fucking place!?
Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
After that I worked at a bank for their Y2K project, and they were rolling new desktops out (corporate desktops - not personal computers - we were to stress this!) and one of the things they agonized over was desktop wallpaper, yea or nay? Word from our staff liason was that there had never been an issue, but they went with a forced orange / dark green logo picture anyways, man that thing was fuckin' ugly. One of the higher up VPs actually said, "You wouldn't plaster your phone with pictures would you?" and my thought was, yeah, they do, they put stickers all over them.
I *did* have a Sunshine girl calendar in my locker in high school and a supply teacher tore it down in a rage and stormed off with it. Nevermind that three lockers down, a girl I would go on to date had a playgirl centrefold up in her locker - schlong out and all. Anyways, my math teacher advised they couldn't actually do that to me and sent me to the office to collect my calendar - hey, it was $10 back then. I went down and one of the secretaries laughed, "Oh that was yours!" and handed me a box - a veritable treasure trove of confiscated erotica! Ladies with enormous chests (nipples unleashed in some cases) and even larger hair! (It was the 80s) and more than a few posters of dudes - a few with their dicks out no less! Anways, I just took the whole thing. I went back to my locker and put my calendar back up, but what to do with the other sexy treasures? I handed them out. That whole row of lockers was like a goddamn Playboy / Playgirl exhibition for the rest of the school year.
Riot signs controversial sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia city project
While simultaneously using LGBTQ+ logo.
The deal will see Neom become the main partner for the LEC's summer season and sponsor a new "Oracle Lens" segment of the live broadcast, which along with a similar partnership with CS:GO tournament BLAST, should bring the project a fair amount of exposure. Neom is a cross-border city project planned for construction in the Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia. Backed by both the Saudi Arabian state and international investors, the megacity is supposed to represent the future of humanity, with plans made by Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman including flying cars, robot dinosaurs and a giant artificial moon (via Wall Street Journal [paywall]). Costing £400bn to complete, the city-state will cover an area the size of Belgium.
There appears to be a far darker side to this high-tech city, however, as reports allege Saudi authorities are removing and even killing Huwaiti tribe members to make way for the project (via The Guardian). Following the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an act the CIA attributed to Salman, the crown prince allegedly told colleagues that "no one will invest [in the project] for years" due to the international outcry that followed (via The Financial Times [paywall]).
This is the sort of thing I absolutely expect from Riot.
The project they are getting sponsored by is the sort of horrific propaganda boondoggle that no company should want to touch with a 100 foot pole.
Riot has backed down on this within the day, after outcry from all sorts of sources, including the LEC casters (Who as far as i can tell, were PISSED about this).
So... Cool, you backed down, why the fuck did it happen in the first fucking place!?
Sweet, sweet petroleum dollars?
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
Riot signs controversial sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia city project
While simultaneously using LGBTQ+ logo.
The deal will see Neom become the main partner for the LEC's summer season and sponsor a new "Oracle Lens" segment of the live broadcast, which along with a similar partnership with CS:GO tournament BLAST, should bring the project a fair amount of exposure. Neom is a cross-border city project planned for construction in the Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia. Backed by both the Saudi Arabian state and international investors, the megacity is supposed to represent the future of humanity, with plans made by Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman including flying cars, robot dinosaurs and a giant artificial moon (via Wall Street Journal [paywall]). Costing £400bn to complete, the city-state will cover an area the size of Belgium.
There appears to be a far darker side to this high-tech city, however, as reports allege Saudi authorities are removing and even killing Huwaiti tribe members to make way for the project (via The Guardian). Following the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an act the CIA attributed to Salman, the crown prince allegedly told colleagues that "no one will invest [in the project] for years" due to the international outcry that followed (via The Financial Times [paywall]).
This is the sort of thing I absolutely expect from Riot.
The project they are getting sponsored by is the sort of horrific propaganda boondoggle that no company should want to touch with a 100 foot pole.
Riot has backed down on this within the day, after outcry from all sorts of sources, including the LEC casters (Who as far as i can tell, were PISSED about this).
So... Cool, you backed down, why the fuck did it happen in the first fucking place!?
Reminds me of that company who did an interview on 8chan
+8
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
Riot signs controversial sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia city project
While simultaneously using LGBTQ+ logo.
The deal will see Neom become the main partner for the LEC's summer season and sponsor a new "Oracle Lens" segment of the live broadcast, which along with a similar partnership with CS:GO tournament BLAST, should bring the project a fair amount of exposure. Neom is a cross-border city project planned for construction in the Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia. Backed by both the Saudi Arabian state and international investors, the megacity is supposed to represent the future of humanity, with plans made by Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman including flying cars, robot dinosaurs and a giant artificial moon (via Wall Street Journal [paywall]). Costing £400bn to complete, the city-state will cover an area the size of Belgium.
There appears to be a far darker side to this high-tech city, however, as reports allege Saudi authorities are removing and even killing Huwaiti tribe members to make way for the project (via The Guardian). Following the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an act the CIA attributed to Salman, the crown prince allegedly told colleagues that "no one will invest [in the project] for years" due to the international outcry that followed (via The Financial Times [paywall]).
This is the sort of thing I absolutely expect from Riot.
The project they are getting sponsored by is the sort of horrific propaganda boondoggle that no company should want to touch with a 100 foot pole.
Riot has backed down on this within the day, after outcry from all sorts of sources, including the LEC casters (Who as far as i can tell, were PISSED about this).
So... Cool, you backed down, why the fuck did it happen in the first fucking place!?
Reminds me of that company who did an interview on 8chan
Riot signs controversial sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia city project
While simultaneously using LGBTQ+ logo.
The deal will see Neom become the main partner for the LEC's summer season and sponsor a new "Oracle Lens" segment of the live broadcast, which along with a similar partnership with CS:GO tournament BLAST, should bring the project a fair amount of exposure. Neom is a cross-border city project planned for construction in the Tabuk province of Saudi Arabia. Backed by both the Saudi Arabian state and international investors, the megacity is supposed to represent the future of humanity, with plans made by Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman including flying cars, robot dinosaurs and a giant artificial moon (via Wall Street Journal [paywall]). Costing £400bn to complete, the city-state will cover an area the size of Belgium.
There appears to be a far darker side to this high-tech city, however, as reports allege Saudi authorities are removing and even killing Huwaiti tribe members to make way for the project (via The Guardian). Following the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an act the CIA attributed to Salman, the crown prince allegedly told colleagues that "no one will invest [in the project] for years" due to the international outcry that followed (via The Financial Times [paywall]).
This is the sort of thing I absolutely expect from Riot.
The project they are getting sponsored by is the sort of horrific propaganda boondoggle that no company should want to touch with a 100 foot pole.
Riot has backed down on this within the day, after outcry from all sorts of sources, including the LEC casters (Who as far as i can tell, were PISSED about this).
So... Cool, you backed down, why the fuck did it happen in the first fucking place!?
Sweet, sweet petroleum dollars?
Pretty much this. The project probably promised them a veritable truck/boatload of cash as a way to make inroads in repairing the project's and by extension, the Saudi public image abroad. Morals are easy to be bought when the figure involved starts climbing into the 7+ figure territory.
Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
I don't understand. His coworker teased him about her all male nudie calendar, right? Doesn't sound like she was laughed at for being uncomfortable, sounds like she got laughed at for stepping on her own landmine.
+15
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
I don't understand. His coworker teased him about her all male nudie calendar, right? Doesn't sound like she was laughed at for being uncomfortable, sounds like she got laughed at for stepping on her own landmine.
I guess it depends on the nature of her "comment", which he didn't expound upon. That also adds to my confusion since he hasn't explained it further.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Slight derail: Back in the day I worked at a large insurance company as an IT contractor. One summer they had one of the firefighter calendar drives and the dudes came in and signed the calendars, so basically all the cubes were filled with half naked calendar dudes. Whatever.
I was fixing a printer in a cube and one of the women made some comment about the calendar and I offered, without missing a beat, that it was ok as I had a Sunshine Girl (bikini clad young women) calendar up at my desk. (Which wasn't true of course.) She gawked at me, the raw sexism of it! Her cubemates laughed and she went to say something, then closed her mouth, then opened it, then her cubemates started to laugh even louder. I can't even remember what was said, but I finished fixing their printer and wandered off to my next fix.
I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
I don't understand. His coworker teased him about her all male nudie calendar, right? Doesn't sound like she was laughed at for being uncomfortable, sounds like she got laughed at for stepping on her own landmine.
I guess it depends on the nature of her "comment", which he didn't expound upon. That also adds to my confusion since he hasn't explained it further.
This is why zero tolerance in the workplace is the only workable option, in my opinion. I'm just projecting what his story reads like to me, but imagine something like:
"What do you think of my gentleman?"
"Cool, what do you think of my ladies?"
Now, I know there is a power imbalance between them, but if giving back exactly what you got is wrong, I don't think there is a person alive that can calculate the imbalance and fire back an appropriately playful counter.
+2
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Yeah my take was more like,
Her: "Why are all these nudy calendars everywhere? They're gross"
Him: "It's OK for them to have those guys, because I've got nudy girls back at my desk!"
*cue coworker laughter at the "prude"*
Unless he explains further I don't really know which circumstance it was.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
We looked at locking down the desktop background, but in 10 years with 70 up to now 450 staff, we've never had an issue. If there was an issue it would get addressed.
This is how tons of shitty corporations prevent those things from becoming an "issue."
If you now say there is an issue, you are the weirdo and will have "well, we did it for years without issue" as evidence you are wrong and it is not actually an issue. Past silence is proof used to ensure further silence
The entire caster team refused to go on air till the deal was revoked. So massive credit to them, and holy shit I hope they avoid retailation.
Def shows the whole horrible hydra nature of these things though. And the cultural problems that this deal even got through without consulting the caster team (at least one member of which is actively out and queer)
So wait, I'm really confused about something. Saudi Arabia is building a city with flying cars and a fake moon? What? I feel like focusing on an esport sponsorship is burying the lead here, wtf.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
So wait, I'm really confused about something. Saudi Arabia is building a city with flying cars and a fake moon? What? I feel like focusing on an esport sponsorship is burying the lead here, wtf.
You weren't aware of how autocractically deranged the Saudi government is?
Yeah my take was more like,
Her: "Why are all these nudy calendars everywhere? They're gross"
Him: "It's OK for them to have those guys, because I've got nudy girls back at my desk!"
*cue coworker laughter at the "prude"*
Unless he explains further I don't really know which circumstance it was.
The only descriptive information about the female coworker in Nosf's anecdote is "one of the women made some comment about the calendar" as well as her reaction. Without knowing what the comment was, I don't know exactly how to interpret it from the context.
But my opinion is that this is probably bad anyway? I'm not trying to harp on Nosf, honestly, but the way the anecdote reads is that an audience was intentionally invoked to collectively laugh at (not with) the female coworker. While you can't control exactly how an audience responds, it feels like that was the intended result. I'm actually not convinced the coworker's original comment mattered, whether it was disdain, discomfort, total support of the calendar, or somewhere in between. The anecdote seems intentionally exclusionary and negative. I'm not trying to harp on Nosf, but it feels like a form of workplace bullying, or at least something we should have less of in the workplace no matter what the context is.
My takeaway from the anecdote is the image of a female coworker sharing a personal thought about something that happened in the office, and then a bunch of adjacent coworkers laughing her into silence. That's not a good look, for me.
edit: I mean I feel like it was probably a throwaway bon mot and not a calculated attempt to belittle this person, but I also feel like before COVID my office was trying to dial back on the "mean" witticisms being slung at each other specifically because it can create an uncomfortable culture for coworkers, collectively or individually. You never know when you're gonna get someone at the wrong time with the wrong comment, too.
I can get where the story could be taken either way, but if you look at the whole context of the post, it was pretty clear a good chunk of what he was highlighting was the perceived inequality of enforcement (See the one about the high school locker, where girl with picture of guy was not harassed but he was with a picture of a girl).
The only thing for me (and this isn't against Nosf at all), is that if everyone just laughed at her for her being hypocritical, the real shame is that there was a probable wasted chance to actually educate someone and get things "right" or just open a dialog in the office about harassment and double standards. In this case, she was mocked for it, and probably became deeply resentful. Based on what we know of people (see most right wing folks these days) she probably would just double down on her opinions.
+2
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ThegreatcowLord of All BaconsWashington State - It's Wet up here innit? Registered Userregular
So wait, I'm really confused about something. Saudi Arabia is building a city with flying cars and a fake moon? What? I feel like focusing on an esport sponsorship is burying the lead here, wtf.
Essentially Saudi Arabia is bankrolling this massive megacity project as a sort of "Future City" with planned everything as a self contained city that technically has everything its residents would ever want with the latest and greatest construction of buildings facilities plumbing etc. Think Epcot Center but you actually live there.
It's similar to those artificial island neighborhoods that have been springing up along the coast of several middle eastern states where massive infrastructure is created to attract foreign investment and capital and to cater to those same individuals who have such ludicrous amounts of capital at the same time. Of course the dark side to all this is that a large chunk of this construction is all but outright confirmed to be built on the backs of slave labor where immigrants come to Saudi to work under the guise of fancy foreign-labor programs that promise great salaries and benefits, but when the workers arrive, their passport/documents are basically stolen from them and held hostage by their sponsoring company and they're forced to work under insane and inhuman conditions, resulting in thousands of deaths throughout the life of the project. The sucky part is that Saudi Arabia has done a fairly solid job of keeping the vast majority of that negative bit out of the world press just on account of the sheer amount of money involved so they can pretty much buy their way into civic acceptance it seems because of the lucrative contracts involved for companies to get involved with these projects.
And that's what basically happened with Riot. Riot I'm sure was aware of all this, especially about the abysmal human and LGBTQ rights violations in that country, but decided accepting some massive truckload of cash from the Saudi government in exchange for ballyhooing about this project as a banner sponsor for their League tournament was a fine and dandy idea.
I have never seen a zero-tolerance policy that was actually enforced rather than becoming an excuse to not document behavior in violation of the zero-tolerance policy should someone important violate it. To me, "we have a zero-tolerance policy" means that it happens regularly.
I have never seen a zero-tolerance policy that was actually enforced rather than becoming an excuse to not document behavior in violation of the zero-tolerance policy should someone important violate it. To me, "we have a zero-tolerance policy" means that it happens regularly.
I'm not certain the point you are trying to make. How are zero policy rules their own excuse to violate them?
I have never seen a zero-tolerance policy that was actually enforced rather than becoming an excuse to not document behavior in violation of the zero-tolerance policy should someone important violate it. To me, "we have a zero-tolerance policy" means that it happens regularly.
I'm not certain the point you are trying to make. How are zero policy rules their own excuse to violate them?
A true zero tolerance means violations end in termination. This removes any incremental managerial disciplinary process. So in order to retain a violator the only option is to not report/document.
I have never seen a zero-tolerance policy that was actually enforced rather than becoming an excuse to not document behavior in violation of the zero-tolerance policy should someone important violate it. To me, "we have a zero-tolerance policy" means that it happens regularly.
I'm not certain the point you are trying to make. How are zero policy rules their own excuse to violate them?
A true zero tolerance means violations end in termination. This removes any incremental managerial disciplinary process. So in order to retain a violator the only option is to not report/document.
Yeah, but that does not seem to be the type of "zero-tolerance" policy actually being discussed. It wasn't "any violation and you are fired", it was "no exceptions".
Zero tolerance policies on desk decoration also save HR from protracted discussions on what constitutes offensive
Nobody wants a two hour argument on why the Venus de Milo is acceptable when a clothed schoolgirl being penetrated by an octopus isn't (or vice versa), or how much cleavage is too much, etc
It's zero tolerance for having desk decorations. The purpose of which is to make it easier for management and HR because then there's no arguments over what does and does not constitute acceptable.
I've heard guys like this prick exist, but this is the first time I've seen one try to justify their behavior (first image is from "Am I the Asshole?").
"A FEMALE who likes NERD stuff? I don't BUY it! She must be some kind of duplicitous HARLOT!"
I'm so happy to read his former friends called him out, disowned him, and accepted her, but what even is the point of this behavior in the first place???
I've heard multiple stories of male nerds who are for some reason extremely wary of "fake geek girls", and apparently this has been happening for a long time! A blog I follow once reposted a comic page about a girl wanting to go to a comic book store but being afraid of the boys there ganging up on her to test if she's a "real nerd" and to see if she belongs there.
The comic is dated March 1998! It's twenty-two years old! Sixteen years before Gamergate! There's a Tamagotchi reference in the second panel!
I imagine this comic for children has a happy ending of her going into the comic store and being accepted and such, but in real life there are still guys pulling that sort of thing. Possibly more than ever!
My cousin and I aren't on good terms anymore, but I remember her telling me a relevant story from back when she was working at a GameStop in Athens. A customer came in while she was in the process of cleaning a section of the store, and she asked if she could help him find anything. He completely ignored her and went to ask a male employee for help. Later, when this customer was checking out and chatting with my cousin's male co-worker, she chimed in to give her opinions on some piece of gaming news they were talking about. The customer looked at her and replied "OH! You do know about games. I had assumed they'd just hired you to clean."
It's just such a frankly bizarre form of sexism. It'd be one thing if guys were just assuming women aren't in general as into nerd stuff as guys are, but the extra mile of "I'll PROVE that this FEMALE is a LIAR who doesn't even KNOW that Zombor is the eighth boss of Chrono Trigger!" is absurd!
I wasn't expecting to go on a rant about sexism against women in nerd culture first thing after waking up, but here I am. Ughhhhh.
I've heard guys like this prick exist, but this is the first time I've seen one try to justify their behavior (first image is from "Am I the Asshole?").
"A FEMALE who likes NERD stuff? I don't BUY it! She must be some kind of duplicitous HARLOT!"
I'm so happy to read his former friends called him out, disowned him, and accepted her, but what even is the point of this behavior in the first place???
I've heard multiple stories of male nerds who are for some reason extremely wary of "fake geek girls", and apparently this has been happening for a long time! A blog I follow once reposted a comic page about a girl wanting to go to a comic book store but being afraid of the boys there ganging up on her to test if she's a "real nerd" and to see if she belongs there.
The comic is dated March 1998! It's twenty-two years old! Sixteen years before Gamergate! There's a Tamagotchi reference in the second panel!
I imagine this comic for children has a happy ending of her going into the comic store and being accepted and such, but in real life there are still guys pulling that sort of thing. Possibly more than ever!
My cousin and I aren't on good terms anymore, but I remember her telling me a relevant story from back when she was working at a GameStop in Athens. A customer came in while she was in the process of cleaning a section of the store, and she asked if she could help him find anything. He completely ignored her and went to ask a male employee for help. Later, when this customer was checking out and chatting with my cousin's male co-worker, she chimed in to give her opinions on some piece of gaming news they were talking about. The customer looked at her and replied "OH! You do know about games. I had assumed they'd just hired you to clean."
It's just such a frankly bizarre form of sexism. It'd be one thing if guys were just assuming women aren't in general as into nerd stuff as guys are, but the extra mile of "I'll PROVE that this FEMALE is a LIAR who doesn't even KNOW that Zombor is the eighth boss of Chrono Trigger!" is absurd!
I wasn't expecting to go on a rant about sexism against women in nerd culture first thing after waking up, but here I am. Ughhhhh.
It's fucking purity testing all over again, with the implication that the woman is only there/has viewers because she has boobs and that's the only reason she's there- to be counter candy at a comic/game shop or to lead her viewers on with the promise of showing more flesh on Twitch (and therefore must be brigaded out of existence because OMG she has bewbs arglebargle...) Or she could just be someone's girlfriend, here to pick up an order- she couldn't be a real fan because comics and games are for BOYS and females only play cute phone games and Barbie games etc...
Most of the old guard who do this kind of thing have moved online to your GooberGeep strongholds and roving bands of Twitch assholes who purity test/mass report women if they don't think they're gamer enough.
I've always said that the whole video games thing was so skewed in the olden days because some wonk decided that Barbie Fashion Designer was actually a video game, and therefore that meant girls didn't want the same kind of games, they wanted cute pink frilly games that didn't require much thought or would train them for other life decisions like raising babies and finding love with the first dope who showed interest...
It's not just purity testing. It's holding her to a higher standard to get the same recognition as a male nerd.
My wife is what some people might call a fake nerd girl. When we met, she liked Star Trek... Enterprise. She liked Transformers.... The Michael Bay movies. She liked Batman and Wolverine from the movies, and the MCU hadn't started yet but would add Iron Man and Thor to that later.
What does that mean? It means there's so much cool stuff I can share with her and that exploration built our relationship, and it still continues now almost 20 years later, and has become mutual as we both share new finds. This jackass could find something wonderful if he stopped challenging girls' nerd credentials but took the chance to share his own.
I've heard guys like this prick exist, but this is the first time I've seen one try to justify their behavior (first image is from "Am I the Asshole?").
"A FEMALE who likes NERD stuff? I don't BUY it! She must be some kind of duplicitous HARLOT!"
I'm so happy to read his former friends called him out, disowned him, and accepted her, but what even is the point of this behavior in the first place???
I've heard multiple stories of male nerds who are for some reason extremely wary of "fake geek girls", and apparently this has been happening for a long time! A blog I follow once reposted a comic page about a girl wanting to go to a comic book store but being afraid of the boys there ganging up on her to test if she's a "real nerd" and to see if she belongs there.
The comic is dated March 1998! It's twenty-two years old! Sixteen years before Gamergate! There's a Tamagotchi reference in the second panel!
I imagine this comic for children has a happy ending of her going into the comic store and being accepted and such, but in real life there are still guys pulling that sort of thing. Possibly more than ever!
My cousin and I aren't on good terms anymore, but I remember her telling me a relevant story from back when she was working at a GameStop in Athens. A customer came in while she was in the process of cleaning a section of the store, and she asked if she could help him find anything. He completely ignored her and went to ask a male employee for help. Later, when this customer was checking out and chatting with my cousin's male co-worker, she chimed in to give her opinions on some piece of gaming news they were talking about. The customer looked at her and replied "OH! You do know about games. I had assumed they'd just hired you to clean."
It's just such a frankly bizarre form of sexism. It'd be one thing if guys were just assuming women aren't in general as into nerd stuff as guys are, but the extra mile of "I'll PROVE that this FEMALE is a LIAR who doesn't even KNOW that Zombor is the eighth boss of Chrono Trigger!" is absurd!
I wasn't expecting to go on a rant about sexism against women in nerd culture first thing after waking up, but here I am. Ughhhhh.
Man, I didn't even have to read that entire screed to determine whether the author is an asshole.
4th sentence - "I had a feeling she's not really one of us".
As a warning before you browse the "Am I The Asshole" subreddits. Much of it is creative writing trolls. While I'm sure many awful things happen that makes someone an asshole regularly, I wouldn't count on AITA to be a representation of it.
Most people probably know this. I figured I'd point it out just in case.
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I've heard guys like this prick exist, but this is the first time I've seen one try to justify their behavior (first image is from "Am I the Asshole?").
"A FEMALE who likes NERD stuff? I don't BUY it! She must be some kind of duplicitous HARLOT!"
I'm so happy to read his former friends called him out, disowned him, and accepted her, but what even is the point of this behavior in the first place???
I've heard multiple stories of male nerds who are for some reason extremely wary of "fake geek girls", and apparently this has been happening for a long time! A blog I follow once reposted a comic page about a girl wanting to go to a comic book store but being afraid of the boys there ganging up on her to test if she's a "real nerd" and to see if she belongs there.
The comic is dated March 1998! It's twenty-two years old! Sixteen years before Gamergate! There's a Tamagotchi reference in the second panel!
I imagine this comic for children has a happy ending of her going into the comic store and being accepted and such, but in real life there are still guys pulling that sort of thing. Possibly more than ever!
My cousin and I aren't on good terms anymore, but I remember her telling me a relevant story from back when she was working at a GameStop in Athens. A customer came in while she was in the process of cleaning a section of the store, and she asked if she could help him find anything. He completely ignored her and went to ask a male employee for help. Later, when this customer was checking out and chatting with my cousin's male co-worker, she chimed in to give her opinions on some piece of gaming news they were talking about. The customer looked at her and replied "OH! You do know about games. I had assumed they'd just hired you to clean."
It's just such a frankly bizarre form of sexism. It'd be one thing if guys were just assuming women aren't in general as into nerd stuff as guys are, but the extra mile of "I'll PROVE that this FEMALE is a LIAR who doesn't even KNOW that Zombor is the eighth boss of Chrono Trigger!" is absurd!
I wasn't expecting to go on a rant about sexism against women in nerd culture first thing after waking up, but here I am. Ughhhhh.
Check out the comments in that r/AITA thread for lots of women recounting experiences dealing with stuff like this too. Hopefully that dude wises up and breaks out of that mentality, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.
My knee jerk reaction is that post was fake. However, in the horrifying reality of 2020 we can only assume the worst.
The post might be fake, but the phenomenon is real. Hell, search YouTube for real established streamers talking about the professional plaintiff that just sued Twitch over female streamers - you'll find a lot worse than this story.
Edit: In a way a fake story is better for opening a discussion because there's no real complex person to cloud judgement, the single event can be seen in a void.
Maybe it's because I'm an Old and I grew up before nerds conquered pop culture, but during high school I would have gladly give up several limbs and internal organs for a girl that was interested in geek stuff.
Maybe it's because I'm an Old and I grew up before nerds conquered pop culture, but during high school I would have gladly give up several limbs and internal organs for a girl that was interested in geek stuff.
I feel like 90s marketing did a number on a lot of young men in their formative years.
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I'm not sure if you're putting this forward as a thing you learned how not to do anymore or not. If someone expresses discomfort with a sexually charged calendar, someone of either sex complaining about a calendar portraying either sex, it's OK for them to be uncomfortable with that and it's not OK for her place of business to make her feel like a fool for bringing it up. Laughing at her because she expressed discomfort is exactly how toxic workplaces act. Now maybe that was only about the calendars, but I bet the next time she felt uncomfortable with someone or something, she just swallowed it, regardless of its severity, because she already knew she'd be laughed at for not being comfortable with sexual things in the workplace.
Sure, but it's not super hard to figure out the context you're living in unless something is impacting your judgement of social norms and basic empathy.
Humans being different doesn't mean humans can't read the dang room.
Like, I think female-presenting nipples are fine. But I recognize that I'm surrounded by prudes and creeps.
Also like... the treatment of women and men is very very different (and unfair). So sometimes things that are OK from one side aren't of you switch the gender.
Not that men can't be discriminated against or be harassed or anything, but overall patterns matter.
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I actually got talked to about changing my wallpaper (I think I had some space wallpaper or something)
I've also been talked to about not wearing clothing with the company logo enough...in a jokey joke kind of "We're totally not joking haha" kind of way
Are semi-nude calendars one of those things? I can't really see a reasonable rationale under which such calendars of one gender are considered reasonable workplace decor but calendars of the other are not.
If anyone has discomfort towards it, neither is okay- And as people are slow to voice discomfort at the workplace, especially towards superiors, it really should just not be done at all.
But of course, it's always about the power dynamic, too. Women have been oppressed in the workplace (and everywhere else..) for a long, long time in many cultures, so you're going to get a "beating up" vs "beating down" situation.
Most men wouldn't be annoyed by a nude male calendar, because they inherently don't feel oppressed, because their gender wasn't oppressed, and don't see a calendar like this as another piece of objectification normalization.
Women, on the other hand, have millennia of oppression, objectification and abuse, which of course still continues to that day.
Of course gender roles are actually bad and oppressive to both men and women, because they press both in a mold built by our ancestors, but when the abused becomes the abuser, themselves, you still need to protect the one being abused currently, before taking on the system of abuse
Riot has backed down on this within the day, after outcry from all sorts of sources, including the LEC casters (Who as far as i can tell, were PISSED about this).
So... Cool, you backed down, why the fuck did it happen in the first fucking place!?
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Yer a blessing you is!
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
Sweet, sweet petroleum dollars?
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Reminds me of that company who did an interview on 8chan
Shoutout to Mark!
(It was THQ Nordic)
Pretty much this. The project probably promised them a veritable truck/boatload of cash as a way to make inroads in repairing the project's and by extension, the Saudi public image abroad. Morals are easy to be bought when the figure involved starts climbing into the 7+ figure territory.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
I don't understand. His coworker teased him about her all male nudie calendar, right? Doesn't sound like she was laughed at for being uncomfortable, sounds like she got laughed at for stepping on her own landmine.
I guess it depends on the nature of her "comment", which he didn't expound upon. That also adds to my confusion since he hasn't explained it further.
This is why zero tolerance in the workplace is the only workable option, in my opinion. I'm just projecting what his story reads like to me, but imagine something like:
"What do you think of my gentleman?"
"Cool, what do you think of my ladies?"
Now, I know there is a power imbalance between them, but if giving back exactly what you got is wrong, I don't think there is a person alive that can calculate the imbalance and fire back an appropriately playful counter.
Her: "Why are all these nudy calendars everywhere? They're gross"
Him: "It's OK for them to have those guys, because I've got nudy girls back at my desk!"
*cue coworker laughter at the "prude"*
Unless he explains further I don't really know which circumstance it was.
If you now say there is an issue, you are the weirdo and will have "well, we did it for years without issue" as evidence you are wrong and it is not actually an issue. Past silence is proof used to ensure further silence
Dont rock the boat.
We've got a good thing going.
We work well together.
That's just how things are done here.
Yeah no, if theres a problem, itll get addressed is just, never going to work. That assumes some good faith from people that dont deserve it.
The entire caster team refused to go on air till the deal was revoked. So massive credit to them, and holy shit I hope they avoid retailation.
Def shows the whole horrible hydra nature of these things though. And the cultural problems that this deal even got through without consulting the caster team (at least one member of which is actively out and queer)
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You weren't aware of how autocractically deranged the Saudi government is?
The only descriptive information about the female coworker in Nosf's anecdote is "one of the women made some comment about the calendar" as well as her reaction. Without knowing what the comment was, I don't know exactly how to interpret it from the context.
But my opinion is that this is probably bad anyway? I'm not trying to harp on Nosf, honestly, but the way the anecdote reads is that an audience was intentionally invoked to collectively laugh at (not with) the female coworker. While you can't control exactly how an audience responds, it feels like that was the intended result. I'm actually not convinced the coworker's original comment mattered, whether it was disdain, discomfort, total support of the calendar, or somewhere in between. The anecdote seems intentionally exclusionary and negative. I'm not trying to harp on Nosf, but it feels like a form of workplace bullying, or at least something we should have less of in the workplace no matter what the context is.
My takeaway from the anecdote is the image of a female coworker sharing a personal thought about something that happened in the office, and then a bunch of adjacent coworkers laughing her into silence. That's not a good look, for me.
edit: I mean I feel like it was probably a throwaway bon mot and not a calculated attempt to belittle this person, but I also feel like before COVID my office was trying to dial back on the "mean" witticisms being slung at each other specifically because it can create an uncomfortable culture for coworkers, collectively or individually. You never know when you're gonna get someone at the wrong time with the wrong comment, too.
The only thing for me (and this isn't against Nosf at all), is that if everyone just laughed at her for her being hypocritical, the real shame is that there was a probable wasted chance to actually educate someone and get things "right" or just open a dialog in the office about harassment and double standards. In this case, she was mocked for it, and probably became deeply resentful. Based on what we know of people (see most right wing folks these days) she probably would just double down on her opinions.
Essentially Saudi Arabia is bankrolling this massive megacity project as a sort of "Future City" with planned everything as a self contained city that technically has everything its residents would ever want with the latest and greatest construction of buildings facilities plumbing etc. Think Epcot Center but you actually live there.
It's similar to those artificial island neighborhoods that have been springing up along the coast of several middle eastern states where massive infrastructure is created to attract foreign investment and capital and to cater to those same individuals who have such ludicrous amounts of capital at the same time. Of course the dark side to all this is that a large chunk of this construction is all but outright confirmed to be built on the backs of slave labor where immigrants come to Saudi to work under the guise of fancy foreign-labor programs that promise great salaries and benefits, but when the workers arrive, their passport/documents are basically stolen from them and held hostage by their sponsoring company and they're forced to work under insane and inhuman conditions, resulting in thousands of deaths throughout the life of the project. The sucky part is that Saudi Arabia has done a fairly solid job of keeping the vast majority of that negative bit out of the world press just on account of the sheer amount of money involved so they can pretty much buy their way into civic acceptance it seems because of the lucrative contracts involved for companies to get involved with these projects.
And that's what basically happened with Riot. Riot I'm sure was aware of all this, especially about the abysmal human and LGBTQ rights violations in that country, but decided accepting some massive truckload of cash from the Saudi government in exchange for ballyhooing about this project as a banner sponsor for their League tournament was a fine and dandy idea.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
I'm not certain the point you are trying to make. How are zero policy rules their own excuse to violate them?
A true zero tolerance means violations end in termination. This removes any incremental managerial disciplinary process. So in order to retain a violator the only option is to not report/document.
Yeah, but that does not seem to be the type of "zero-tolerance" policy actually being discussed. It wasn't "any violation and you are fired", it was "no exceptions".
ie -
It's zero tolerance for having desk decorations. The purpose of which is to make it easier for management and HR because then there's no arguments over what does and does not constitute acceptable.
"A FEMALE who likes NERD stuff? I don't BUY it! She must be some kind of duplicitous HARLOT!"
I'm so happy to read his former friends called him out, disowned him, and accepted her, but what even is the point of this behavior in the first place???
I've heard multiple stories of male nerds who are for some reason extremely wary of "fake geek girls", and apparently this has been happening for a long time! A blog I follow once reposted a comic page about a girl wanting to go to a comic book store but being afraid of the boys there ganging up on her to test if she's a "real nerd" and to see if she belongs there.
The comic is dated March 1998! It's twenty-two years old! Sixteen years before Gamergate! There's a Tamagotchi reference in the second panel!
I imagine this comic for children has a happy ending of her going into the comic store and being accepted and such, but in real life there are still guys pulling that sort of thing. Possibly more than ever!
My cousin and I aren't on good terms anymore, but I remember her telling me a relevant story from back when she was working at a GameStop in Athens. A customer came in while she was in the process of cleaning a section of the store, and she asked if she could help him find anything. He completely ignored her and went to ask a male employee for help. Later, when this customer was checking out and chatting with my cousin's male co-worker, she chimed in to give her opinions on some piece of gaming news they were talking about. The customer looked at her and replied "OH! You do know about games. I had assumed they'd just hired you to clean."
It's just such a frankly bizarre form of sexism. It'd be one thing if guys were just assuming women aren't in general as into nerd stuff as guys are, but the extra mile of "I'll PROVE that this FEMALE is a LIAR who doesn't even KNOW that Zombor is the eighth boss of Chrono Trigger!" is absurd!
I wasn't expecting to go on a rant about sexism against women in nerd culture first thing after waking up, but here I am. Ughhhhh.
It's fucking purity testing all over again, with the implication that the woman is only there/has viewers because she has boobs and that's the only reason she's there- to be counter candy at a comic/game shop or to lead her viewers on with the promise of showing more flesh on Twitch (and therefore must be brigaded out of existence because OMG she has bewbs arglebargle...) Or she could just be someone's girlfriend, here to pick up an order- she couldn't be a real fan because comics and games are for BOYS and females only play cute phone games and Barbie games etc...
Most of the old guard who do this kind of thing have moved online to your GooberGeep strongholds and roving bands of Twitch assholes who purity test/mass report women if they don't think they're gamer enough.
I've always said that the whole video games thing was so skewed in the olden days because some wonk decided that Barbie Fashion Designer was actually a video game, and therefore that meant girls didn't want the same kind of games, they wanted cute pink frilly games that didn't require much thought or would train them for other life decisions like raising babies and finding love with the first dope who showed interest...
I can has cheezburger, yes?
My wife is what some people might call a fake nerd girl. When we met, she liked Star Trek... Enterprise. She liked Transformers.... The Michael Bay movies. She liked Batman and Wolverine from the movies, and the MCU hadn't started yet but would add Iron Man and Thor to that later.
What does that mean? It means there's so much cool stuff I can share with her and that exploration built our relationship, and it still continues now almost 20 years later, and has become mutual as we both share new finds. This jackass could find something wonderful if he stopped challenging girls' nerd credentials but took the chance to share his own.
4th sentence - "I had a feeling she's not really one of us".
Yup - you're an asshole.
Most people probably know this. I figured I'd point it out just in case.
Check out the comments in that r/AITA thread for lots of women recounting experiences dealing with stuff like this too. Hopefully that dude wises up and breaks out of that mentality, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.
The post might be fake, but the phenomenon is real. Hell, search YouTube for real established streamers talking about the professional plaintiff that just sued Twitch over female streamers - you'll find a lot worse than this story.
Edit: In a way a fake story is better for opening a discussion because there's no real complex person to cloud judgement, the single event can be seen in a void.
The author is criticizing people who say things like that.
I feel like 90s marketing did a number on a lot of young men in their formative years.