If you think sexual harassment is acceptable, you’re a goddamn idiot.
What the fuck is wrong with that guy?
Quick recap: a few days ago, Capcom held a Street Fighter X Tekken tournament. It was televised, and showed some of the seedy underbelly of the videogaming community. There was misogyny, talk of rape, and the declaration that this was entirely acceptable as Street Fighter and sexual harassment are one and the same thing. Mindblowing.
But, well, it might be a good thing that Capcom thing exploded like it did. This filth needs to be dragged into the light. I have no issues with friendly smack talk between contenders — as long as it’s funny to everyone involved. But that requires some empathy and a feel for the room, so to speak; two traits that Aris guy seem to lack. Telling a female player, nay, anyone, “I’m gonna rape you, bitch” is unacceptable in any given case.
It’s no secret that if you really want to have your heritage, sexuality and race questioned, the fastest way to do that is to just jump into any competitive public online game on Xbox Live. That’s one of the reasons why I seldom play online with strangers, and when I do, why I have the voices muted when playing. But yes, that’s akin to looking the other way. But I’ve used both the XBL report and rate features a few times to complain about some fucknuggets hurtling vile insults in my direction just because I managed to hit them in a Halo match. It’s not much, and I really don’t know whether anything of that made a difference, but not doing anything would’ve been even less of an act.
Quite frankly, I’ve lost all interest in just checking out public/open games on XBL because of that. And I am a male, white, heterosexual, mid-30s guy who’s so far been treated well by the universe. I’m a large, semi-muscular man, I can take it — but as it turns out, I really don’t want to anymore.
Anyway, if you want to read more about these utterly sorry events, GiantBomb’s coverage is good. Still: what a depressing topic.
