Please don't post unsubstantive dismissals to HN, especially not on known flamewar territory. Comments like this one degrade the site and add to the risk of serious damage.
Be interesting to reverse the scenario - what happens when a man enters an all female arena and threatens the hierarchy? In my experience women are just as capable of banding together to ostracise an outsider.
What do you mean by “just as capable”? This research studied a case where men did not band together, but that low status men behaved differently from high status men.
The finding is interesting, but wouldn't it be more interesting still if they had performed the same study with the sexes reversed also? We would then know for definite if there is a sex difference in behaviour. As it is we don't know. Women are just as capable of bad behaviour as men, and to think otherwise is to subscribe to the sugar and spice and all things nice school of sexism.
Also, imagine substituting men and women for black and white, or jew/non-jew, etc. I suspect the ethics board might be asking questions.
This study is asking a question, and that question is not which sex engages in bad behavior! That's an oddly antagonistic approach to the subject. Are there other interesting questions out there? You bet. But studies are performed one at a time.
... because that’s not the question the study was addressing.
We know that lower-status members of a community tend to be more hostile to newcomers / outsiders. The specific question here was ‘does this apply in this particular circumstance’.
What I took from this study is not that men are bad, but that bad behavior towards women is ultimately caused by male dominance hierarchies. It suggests that the best way to reduce hostility to women is by eliminating those hierarchies rather than just stigmatizing men in general.
Why does HN allow articles like this to be posted if it suppresses any arguments against their validity or premise?
This entire topic is flamebait, except only critical arguments are punished.
This is dangerous, because it creates a false appearance of consensus. Further, without allowing for healthy skepticism, we practice something more akin to religion than science.
I'm not sure I understand who you're referring to as "HN" or what you're referring to as suppression? If you'd like to discuss further, we'd be happy if you emailed us at hn@ycombinator.com.
I've seen it hypothesized elsewhere that lower-class racism is largely a product of fear of displacement in the social hierarchy by minorities. I wonder if the same mechanisms are at work.
I assume the game they were testing was "Overwatch".
I recently saw some compilations posted by female streamers of the abuse they receive. It was pretty scary, and the community is uniquely aggressive for some reason.
I am a particularly bad player myself. I actually quit playing with strangers because the abuse made the game not fun, and I am a male.
In my experience low skill players receive an equal amount of harassment, but where I was being called The "N" Word, homosexual slurs, and just told to kill myself, women were given extremely detailed descriptions of how they would be raped, murdered and even cannibalized.
The stuff children think it is acceptable to say to a women anonymously is INSANE. And we have no way of reporting someone for being the next Harvey Weinstien or even Ted Bundy and getting them reliably removed from the game.
They are words. Not bullets, not fists, not gropes. And the fact that there is such a movement to sensationalize what should be harmless to any well adjusted person only encourages the trolls.
This is fundamentally different from in person harassment or bullying. These things dont happen in every round, far from it, and there is nothing stopping people from muting microphones and/or leaving toxic games.
There is no line to be drawn here. Offense is taken, not given. The first line of defense should be to teach people to ignore trolls, as this is the only realistic way to get rid of them. You can't go around arresting 10 year olds for whatever you happen to consider offensive.
>next Harvey Weinstien or even Ted Bundy
That is some extreme paranoia. People online say these things fundamentally because they know that others will find them unacceptable. By crying out over something so innocuous, you encourage the behavior.
Edit: I'd also like to add, we are complaining about bad words in games that simulate killing, murder, and war. Is that consistent, or rational?
Even the supreme court of the United States of 'but muh free speech' America has struck down the notion of threats of violence being a form of protected speech.
Also, where in sweet jesus do you come from that threats of horrific violence--anything short of aggravated assault--is COMPLETELY above-board?
If you use this language with your coworkers, you are liable to be fired. If you use this language with your subordinates, you are liable to be fired and charged with harassment. If you use this language to a server at a restaurant, you are liable to be expelled from the property.
Notably, if you use this language on Hacker News, your account will get thrown directly into the Sun.
This language is not tolerable, and it is absolutely not harmless (want citations?).
> To explore social constructionist and evolutionary explanations for sexist behaviour, we examine how individual performance and social standing affect female-directed male behaviour using an online first-person shooter video game, Halo 3 (see methods for greater details regarding the game).
>To test this hypothesis, we used an online first-person shooter video game that removes signals of dominance but provides information on gender, individual performance, and skill.
All: we've turned off a few of the flags on this article because the discussion so far has not reached the 7th circle of hell. If you're going to comment here, please do so slowly, thoughtfully and make it civil and substantive.
In my experience playing Halo (maybe it was Halo 2) 15 or so years ago was that there's a subset of teenagers who shit talk for the sake of it and they'll use whatever language is most likely to offend. Sex (and race) didn't have much to due with it other than to expand the offensive word bank. That being said, the analysis done in the paper is very intriguing.
If you believe there's not a gendered component, and that it's just generic bullying by some "subset" of "teenagers", then I invite you to just read the replies on Twitter to women who speak out about, say, diversity in tech.
Or start moderating a forum. I mod a couple of subreddits, and from that experience it is literally impossible for me to believe that you are correct.
Occasionally you'll see online harassment shift once they have something they perceive as more damaging to use. Example I saw in the past was all the harassment shifted to mockery about dead child after son died.
I'm afraid that, at least some of the time, people are just trying to be as hurtful as possible. The sexism and rape comments are often just what they think is most hurtful.
Again, it's not an "everybody gets bullied, it's just a choice of what words". It's a "women definitely and measurably get targeted more often, and subjected to far harsher treatment, than men".
If you can't work this out from publicly-available evidence on social media, I'm not really sure what to say to you.
This kind of rhetoric is why we can't have civil discussions on this topic and why articles like this get flagged. Just concluding that "I think X is obvious and if you disagree then we have nothing further to discuss" will just result lose-lose situation for everyone.
There has been games built on the idea of trolling. I have personally been in a guild where the distinction between "just a choice of what words" and "they really mean it" resulted in a person being expelled from the group. The concept is fairly well established, but the effect isn't. This article gives additional data but the interpretation is up for discussion.
For example, do the data say that female players are treated worse by poor performing males, or do poor performing males act more submissive towards high performing males? The article do take a very biological view of the problem, so maybe we should compare the findings with studies done in nature on how animal use displaced aggression. About 80% of aggression in Baboons are are displaced aggression, normally done by a high ranking male having a setback and then go and attacking a low ranking male as form of stress management. If I recall right, the lowest ranking males don't have anyone else to displace the aggression so go after low ranking females instead.
This kind of rhetoric is why we can't have civil discussions on this topic and why articles like this get flagged.
No, the reason why we can't have civil discussions is mostly that the same sorts of people who commit disgusting gendered harassment also feel a need to deny that they do so (and that anyone else does so), and attempt to nit-pick apart anyone who asserts a patently obvious fact about our society.
There's not really room for debate on "is gendered harassment of women, as a qualitatively distinct thing from generic bullying, a real thing that exists".
You will then continue to see articles like this getting flagged. Either one accept that other people may have a different views, or civil discussions breaks down and you get a polarized society such as current political climate.
Also, don't accuse people of committing gendered harassment with nothing to support it. This is exactly the 7th circle of hell comments that sctb mentions above. Just because some disagree with you it don't mean they are racist, sexist, or spawn of Satan. Name calling is just an other form of harassment.
Just because homophobic comments are mostly directed at male players don't make homophobia a "gendered harassment of men, as a qualitatively distinct thing from generic bullying". People are allowed to a different view if something is a gendered harassment of women, gendered harassment of men, and what the cause of it. The use of facts and supportive statements is how civil discussion handles it.
Either one accept that other people may have a different views
People are entitled to their own views, but not to their own facts. Denial of facts that can be openly verified by any person is clear and convincing evidence of bad faith, and I have no rhetorical obligation to be charitable to someone who does so.
When you can acknowledge verifiable reality, though, perhaps we can discuss it.
There's something that doesn't sound convincing to me. The study proposes that
> Low-status males that have the most to lose due to a hierarchical reconfiguration are responding to the threat female competitors pose.
This seems to imply that females are seen as competitors in a male hierarchy. But competitors for what, exactly? Male hierarchies establish a dominance scale, and as the study recalls:
> Even in modern day society, dominance and not attractiveness is associated with college male mating success
(italics mine)
So the position in a male hierarchy largely influences male mating success. What does the position of women in the same hierarchy influence? Even if it improved mating success (and this is debatable), it would improve mating success with men, that is, partners the other males are not interested in. In other words, for a male only the position in the male hierarchy should be relevant, not the position in a global hierarchy.
On the other end, competition should be fierce among males as it's strictly the male hierarchy that determines mating opportunities. But this is at odds one of the results of the study, that women are the target of most abuse while interactions among males are much more guarded.
I believe it's because if a low status male is below in the hierarchy to someone they're trying to impress by being high in the hierarchy it makes them look bad.
I don't believe the point the researchers are trying to make is that low-status men could be lashing out because they're afraid women could beat them in the mating arena, but because women higher in the hierarchy could make them lose.
Because being beaten by a female costs you status among the males. And because they can gain status among the males by beating females verbally, not just by beating them in the game.
Note well: I am not justifying any of this. I'm just saying what I think is going on in their minds, in that culture.
So the position in a male hierarchy largely influences male mating success. What does the position of women in the same hierarchy influence?
Well, to put it bluntly, if a woman "looks up to" a male, she is likely to mate. For males, that means the global hierarchy matter more than just male hierarchy. They need more women under them in this hierarchy to mate more.
35 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 38.1 ms ] threadThe finding is interesting, but wouldn't it be more interesting still if they had performed the same study with the sexes reversed also? We would then know for definite if there is a sex difference in behaviour. As it is we don't know. Women are just as capable of bad behaviour as men, and to think otherwise is to subscribe to the sugar and spice and all things nice school of sexism.
Also, imagine substituting men and women for black and white, or jew/non-jew, etc. I suspect the ethics board might be asking questions.
We know that lower-status members of a community tend to be more hostile to newcomers / outsiders. The specific question here was ‘does this apply in this particular circumstance’.
Incidentally, your agenda is showing.
This entire topic is flamebait, except only critical arguments are punished.
This is dangerous, because it creates a false appearance of consensus. Further, without allowing for healthy skepticism, we practice something more akin to religion than science.
I recently saw some compilations posted by female streamers of the abuse they receive. It was pretty scary, and the community is uniquely aggressive for some reason.
I am a particularly bad player myself. I actually quit playing with strangers because the abuse made the game not fun, and I am a male.
In my experience low skill players receive an equal amount of harassment, but where I was being called The "N" Word, homosexual slurs, and just told to kill myself, women were given extremely detailed descriptions of how they would be raped, murdered and even cannibalized.
The stuff children think it is acceptable to say to a women anonymously is INSANE. And we have no way of reporting someone for being the next Harvey Weinstien or even Ted Bundy and getting them reliably removed from the game.
Wait, are you equating name-calling with the crimes of Ted Bundy?
There's a massive gap between saying you're going to rape someone (which is inappropriate, but no crime), and actually raping them.
This is fundamentally different from in person harassment or bullying. These things dont happen in every round, far from it, and there is nothing stopping people from muting microphones and/or leaving toxic games.
There is no line to be drawn here. Offense is taken, not given. The first line of defense should be to teach people to ignore trolls, as this is the only realistic way to get rid of them. You can't go around arresting 10 year olds for whatever you happen to consider offensive.
>next Harvey Weinstien or even Ted Bundy
That is some extreme paranoia. People online say these things fundamentally because they know that others will find them unacceptable. By crying out over something so innocuous, you encourage the behavior.
Edit: I'd also like to add, we are complaining about bad words in games that simulate killing, murder, and war. Is that consistent, or rational?
The counter to that is, "The pen is mightier than the sword." We might treat them differently than physical violence, but words are not harmless.
Even the supreme court of the United States of 'but muh free speech' America has struck down the notion of threats of violence being a form of protected speech.
Also, where in sweet jesus do you come from that threats of horrific violence--anything short of aggravated assault--is COMPLETELY above-board?
If you use this language with your coworkers, you are liable to be fired. If you use this language with your subordinates, you are liable to be fired and charged with harassment. If you use this language to a server at a restaurant, you are liable to be expelled from the property.
Notably, if you use this language on Hacker News, your account will get thrown directly into the Sun.
This language is not tolerable, and it is absolutely not harmless (want citations?).
> To explore social constructionist and evolutionary explanations for sexist behaviour, we examine how individual performance and social standing affect female-directed male behaviour using an online first-person shooter video game, Halo 3 (see methods for greater details regarding the game).
What are "signals of dominance"
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Or start moderating a forum. I mod a couple of subreddits, and from that experience it is literally impossible for me to believe that you are correct.
I'm afraid that, at least some of the time, people are just trying to be as hurtful as possible. The sexism and rape comments are often just what they think is most hurtful.
If you can't work this out from publicly-available evidence on social media, I'm not really sure what to say to you.
There has been games built on the idea of trolling. I have personally been in a guild where the distinction between "just a choice of what words" and "they really mean it" resulted in a person being expelled from the group. The concept is fairly well established, but the effect isn't. This article gives additional data but the interpretation is up for discussion.
For example, do the data say that female players are treated worse by poor performing males, or do poor performing males act more submissive towards high performing males? The article do take a very biological view of the problem, so maybe we should compare the findings with studies done in nature on how animal use displaced aggression. About 80% of aggression in Baboons are are displaced aggression, normally done by a high ranking male having a setback and then go and attacking a low ranking male as form of stress management. If I recall right, the lowest ranking males don't have anyone else to displace the aggression so go after low ranking females instead.
No, the reason why we can't have civil discussions is mostly that the same sorts of people who commit disgusting gendered harassment also feel a need to deny that they do so (and that anyone else does so), and attempt to nit-pick apart anyone who asserts a patently obvious fact about our society.
There's not really room for debate on "is gendered harassment of women, as a qualitatively distinct thing from generic bullying, a real thing that exists".
Also, don't accuse people of committing gendered harassment with nothing to support it. This is exactly the 7th circle of hell comments that sctb mentions above. Just because some disagree with you it don't mean they are racist, sexist, or spawn of Satan. Name calling is just an other form of harassment.
Just because homophobic comments are mostly directed at male players don't make homophobia a "gendered harassment of men, as a qualitatively distinct thing from generic bullying". People are allowed to a different view if something is a gendered harassment of women, gendered harassment of men, and what the cause of it. The use of facts and supportive statements is how civil discussion handles it.
People are entitled to their own views, but not to their own facts. Denial of facts that can be openly verified by any person is clear and convincing evidence of bad faith, and I have no rhetorical obligation to be charitable to someone who does so.
When you can acknowledge verifiable reality, though, perhaps we can discuss it.
> Low-status males that have the most to lose due to a hierarchical reconfiguration are responding to the threat female competitors pose.
This seems to imply that females are seen as competitors in a male hierarchy. But competitors for what, exactly? Male hierarchies establish a dominance scale, and as the study recalls:
> Even in modern day society, dominance and not attractiveness is associated with college male mating success
(italics mine)
So the position in a male hierarchy largely influences male mating success. What does the position of women in the same hierarchy influence? Even if it improved mating success (and this is debatable), it would improve mating success with men, that is, partners the other males are not interested in. In other words, for a male only the position in the male hierarchy should be relevant, not the position in a global hierarchy.
On the other end, competition should be fierce among males as it's strictly the male hierarchy that determines mating opportunities. But this is at odds one of the results of the study, that women are the target of most abuse while interactions among males are much more guarded.
I don't believe the point the researchers are trying to make is that low-status men could be lashing out because they're afraid women could beat them in the mating arena, but because women higher in the hierarchy could make them lose.
Note well: I am not justifying any of this. I'm just saying what I think is going on in their minds, in that culture.
Well, to put it bluntly, if a woman "looks up to" a male, she is likely to mate. For males, that means the global hierarchy matter more than just male hierarchy. They need more women under them in this hierarchy to mate more.