In-Fiction Sexual Exploitation: blarrrrgh
Lance D. Allen:
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I say this because - as my explanation and Ron's anecdote make plain, there are all kinds of reasons that someone might not object. For example: if I speak up, will any of the other players back me up? If I speak up, what if it only makes things worse? Etc etc. If this behavior correlates with a social power gradient, placing the entirety of the burden on the aggrieved party pretty much means that you're going to get under-reporting, because the very people likely to be victims (not saying I was a victim of much, just frustrated) are the people who will be least effective at getting redress.
This hit me. We're talking about a game, and fictional harassment. When underreporting is so rampant with real-world harassment and even literal assault, why does it seem at all surprising that someone might feel uncomfortable voicing an objection to harassment in a game? I mean, it's just a game, right? More, it's just a temporary situation, and if you ignore it, in many cases, it will go away. I'm not saying this is the right answer. But it's easy to understand why it'd be awkward to be the one rocking the boat.
Comparing this to a similar situation involving real people and "real" harassment makes this seem trivial, both on the side of the harassed and the harasser.
Harasser: "I'm exploring the darker, nastier side of things, things I wouldn't do in real life. We're all dudes here."
Harassed: "My discomfort isn't more important than everyone else's fun, is it? Once this is over, I can just walk away. He wouldn't do this in real life."
Both: "It's just a game. It's not me, it's my character."
James_Nostack:
Quoting from Larry L
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The teleconferencing part actually strikes me as the key factor here. There's a ton of non-explicit social cues built into ordinary human social interaction which are undoubtedly not being transmitted via the technology. Any of which might have ordinarily mitigated the situation into something less uncool.
Undoubtedly - but, of all the people in the group (including the GM), I was by far the most attentive player in making sure the offensive web-cam player could see, understand, and be understood among the group - often asking the "present" players to hold it down for a second because the web-cam guy was trying to say something.
Yes, playing with strangers via web-cam is hard, but not impossible, especially if you know that something is "lost in translation" and are consciously trying to make sure the signal is rich enough that it won't matter. I think that's a responsibility for both sides of the camera.
Quoting Greyorm
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You are correct that there are all sorts of good and valid reasons someone might not voice an objection when their boundaries are violated, and that speaking up can be problematic...but if I don't know, and they don't say...then, yeah, really, it is up to them to object, isn't it? And if not, then...what?
Well - everywhere else in life, if you're doing something which you can reasonably expect a stranger might object to, it's almost universal to check first. Like, "Wow, that last piece of pizza is calling out to me. Unless you want it, I'm going for it." Or, "Mind if I smoke?" Or, "Is this too loud?" This is, presumably, part of your repertoire of behavior and has been since childhood, and even if we don't adhere to that standard all the time, we know it's there.
Right? The question is whether you might reasonably expect someone to object to it. Where it hasn't been previously discussed, I don't think that's a crazy-high standard of courtesy. And I'd argue that where there wasn't prior implicit consent, the principle extends to, "Hey, my character's kind of a dickhole, so maybe we could do thing where my guy bribes this other guy to force your chick to strip for us. Ha ha, funny right?"
FWIW, I didn't say the aggrieved party has zero obligation to object--just that they shouldn't bear the entirety of that burden.
Callan S.:
Ugh! In chess, you don't go 'Wow, your knight is really calling out for me to take it...mind if I do?'. You just take it. You just play. Not playing...I'll just say it...'mother may I' style, in order to actually do something. Just play. And so on with what I said before about setting up arenas of valid moves.
Now if you've considered that direction of handling and decided against it James, cool. But it seems like it's gone back to 'what are the moral obligations here, who has to ask whom what?' as if that is the only way to handle it, probably because it's such a hot button direction it tends to make it look like the only direction. It is not the only way - but if you've decided to choose it, cool, just leaving a quick note in case the option had been forgotten.
greyorm:
James, I think we're both saying the same thing, just having come at it from opposite angles. I think the only real difference we have on this is personal opinion on whether or not "something", whatever that might be, really is reasonably clear to those involved.
At the risk of being more wordy than necessary, I'm actually reminded of this situation from the Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture thread on Metafilter, which isn't an exact parallel, but certainly has elements in common with the situations we're discussing:
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At Thanksgiving, my family and I learned that our friend who was due to pick us up at the airport could not do it, and we were suddenly without a ride home. Our plane landed at around 9 o'clock. Desperate, we compiled a list of friends who lived near the airport and us, and began calling. The first person on a list of about 10 said she could pick us up.
When we arrived, her kids were in the car, struggling to stay awake, and it was raining. She was in a pissy mood all the way home, and then the next day at work, lambasted my wife for asking her to do such a thing. My wife responded that her friend wasn't the only person on the list, and that she could have said 'no'. Friend replied that my wife should have never even asked.
This ended up causing a problem betwen my wife and her friend - my wife is a giving person and would do anything to help a friend in need, and so was deeply hurt to learn that her friend did not reciprocate, but importantly, it created a trust issue -- now my wife can't be sure when friend means what she says, because friend said "yes" when she meant "no".
Pretty clearly, the wife's friend considered her to have deliberately and willfully broken what the friend saw as an entirely obvious unspoken social agreement, and so she shouldn't have HAD to say "No" because her friend should have KNOWN not to even ask. That putting her in that situation was unreasonable of her.
I mean, we always think our own expectations are absolutely reasonable and obvious, even if they aren't and we can't see that. I think that assumption of obviousness -- that "my expectations are reasonable" -- is a regular problem in human communication, and as much of a problem as the assumption of norms -- that "my behaviors are reasonable". And the conflict between them is where I believe (and find) most of these clashes occur, both inside and outside gaming.
Nor are you wrong at all in saying there are basic social boundaries programmed into us from birth that often make clear what is expected and what isn't. Though I can certainly see situational cases where those are over-ridden: such as someone who plays in groups where intra-party dickery is well-established and expected would assume their actions to be baseline, non-objectionable behavior. Or where "everyone helps out, period" and thus someone not doing so is betraying the party and deserves a punch, or whatever, was really seen as a completely reasonable thing to do. I think certain traditional but often dysfunctional attitudes in gaming bear this idea out.
What I don't know is whether or not habitual-assumptive behavior is the case in any of the situations we've discussed here. That, IMO, is the difficult part.
I do agree with you that the aggrieved party shouldn't shoulder the entirety of the burden, and I apologize if I came across as saying so. It certainly is a two-way street.
JoyWriter:
Raven that is a brilliant thread, shows up some differences really nicely! I wonder whether "ask people" could learn by playing Mist Robed Gate? I've come across the "guess culture" attitude in some very extreme cases, where a friend actually feels attacked when people "put her on the spot" about having to face up to a conflict between trying to be nice and showing her actual opinion. Ironically this makes her react angrily! (I've just about got the hang of handling it, it's sort of like playing minesweeper!)
Personally I think it's something you can practice getting right, sort of like balancing the forces within you and your relationships with others so that there's nothing unresolved that could get in your way about being honest. (Sounds a bit daft really, but it's sort of about setting priorities in advance so you can just act)
But if you do this, and nicely resolve the situation, taking any kicks that come from being in a group like ArKayon's, then you are being awesome! Standing up for your principles in a productive way without offending anyone is a serious trick, and I think something to aspire to. It's pretty heroic.
But with all that aside, I agree it's better to have expectations all aligned at the start, if you can do that cleanly. I only know how to do that with friends, not when meeting a random group, so I use an impoverished version of the above strategy. Anyone got any knowledge (or old links) about how you might actually go about calibrating a new group?
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