The Felicia Day/Destructoid situation

[StriderShinryu]

I really don't see any reason why he shouldn't have been canned for what he said. When you're a journalist, you're the public face of an organization and, personal twitter account or not, you're essentially always on. It's no different than if, for example, Susan Arendt tweeted a racist comment on her Twitter. It would be perfectly within the rights of The Escapist to reprimand her or even fire her because her comments would reflect back on them.


It really wasn't at all about the question asked, it was about the way it was asked. He certainly could have asked her what she did in/for the industry (if he somehow didn't know, which is doubtful) without questioning her worth or comparing her to a booth babe. It's not the question that makes him sexist, it's the way he chose to word it. And remember, when you're typing something and sending it out to twitter, it's not the same as being, say, at a party and blurt out a dumb comment because you're drunk. When you post something there is a multistep thought and action process wherein he could/should have stopped himself and said "nah, maybe I shoudn't do that."

 

[Eyelicker]

This was a guy insulting somebody out of nowhere and for absolutely no reason, with no instigation on her part. Say what you will about the Lara Croft thing, but this guy was just being an asshole, and he deserved to be called out on it.

Yeah, and it happens all the time on the internet, moreso if your famous, and evenmore so if it's about journalism. Again, not defending, just saying the reaction is overblown, and calling out has gone too far if someone gets fired. One witty tweet back could have put him in his place and nipped this in the bud.

"i'm pretty sure..."
"I think..."
"In My Opinion..."

Holy fucking christ.... it's amazing how people can turn this topic into internal bitchslapping and spinning the discussion to something COMPLETELY different for no reason at all...

The most impressive is to see just how many of you have a formed opinion before doing the MINIMUM of research on the subject, so much so that just reading up your comments shows how little you know about the thing you're forming an opinion on...

Fucking hell people, 1 minute on google would before posting would render AT LEAST half of the comments in this thread completely pointless.... GEEZ!

Thank you for this comment, this is a good comment, you sure set us all straight.

The reason it's a big topic right now is because it's become a problem. People are getting sick of it and quite rightly too. I have been gaming since 1984 and I'm still considered a second class citizen in gaming. That my friend is bs.

Yeah, it's definitely bs that it should be like that, but the fault mainly lies with the general immaturity of "gamers". Sorry, but as long as the internet and online games exist you're at risk of being insulted by 14 year old virgins.

The thing is, everyone is misrepresented, when I see the 7ft tall steroid mcfacepuncher average male charactor I chalk it down as either tongue in cheek, trying to be attractive to the opposite sex, or (most often), just bad character design design.

It would be like working for Heat magazine and tweeting Lady Gaga and calling her a useless ho. Not exactly a good move.

Really?!? Magazines like heat do nothing but insult, belittle and embarrass celebrities, and no one get's fired. Fame is a Faustian pact.

I don't get why in gaming circles no one has a nice balanced view on woman. They're not all sluts and they're not all shining bastions of purity and goodness, they're just fucking people.

If this is actually what you think, we're definitely in agreement. People who respond to sexism by putting their head in the sand, people who only speak out against sexism because they think it will get them laid, and people who act sexist are all perpetuating the problem in different ways. And, as you said, these attitudes are pretty endemic on gaming websites. AFAIK, the Escapist is one of the least bad ones for this.

Brofist. But yeah, I would say the escapist leans towards white knighting and putting women on a pedestool, but it's definitely more "centre" than most.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Yeah, it's definitely bs that it should be like that, but the fault mainly lies with the general immaturity of "gamers". Sorry, but as long as the internet and online games exist you're at risk of being insulted by 14 year old virgins.

The thing is, everyone is misrepresented, when I see the 7ft tall steroid mcfacepuncher average male charactor I chalk it down as either tongue in cheek, trying to be attractive to the opposite sex, or (most often), just bad character design design.

It's definitely not just 14 year old virgins. If you go and look at moviebobs 'Tropes vs MovieBob' vid and look at the facebook comments you can see that. Professional guys calling gaming a 'Solely male space' and all sorts. As well as some pretty noxious 'Get away from our games' videos.

I don't think male video game characters are designed to be attractive to female gamers. But that is a whole different discussion. You are right that both sexes suffer from bad character design though.

It would be like working for Heat magazine and tweeting Lady Gaga and calling her a useless ho. Not exactly a good move.

Really?!? Magazines like heat do nothing but insult, belittle and embarrass celebrities, and no one get's fired. Fame is a Faustian pact.

In my view it's different doing an expose on a celeb and insulting them in public. Like the guy who called Stephen Fry homophobic slurs. If he had been employed by a magazine he would have been fired on the spot.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

That's funny, when did I went into the so called "protectionist mode"? You just said something I thought was stupid, and I quote.

Which I take to mean that "Maybe he didn't google her because he forgot there was Google". And that somehow makes sense for a friggin' journalist. It doesn't, if you ask me, and I told you that.

Regarding first point: I never said you went into protectionist mode. I said many, or a mob to speak, did.

Second: Google is a device used by the average person to find information told by people, sometimes journalists. Would you want a journalist to take his/her information from say,  Fox News, if he/she wants to talk about the economy? No. You would want that journalist to speak with economists themselves. Same with gaming. A journalist, even an intern, needs to speak to the source directly. Not use regurgitated tidbits from elsewhere. Yes, I may have worded my 'didn't realize google was there' in a stupid manner, but the somewhat underlining point I was trying to make was that Google is not a device that you readily tend to think about for something off the hand. If there's a dictionary by me, even when I'm on my computer, I find myself going to for the dictionary by memory instead of googling "Word Definition". Or I go to news sites firsthand instead of googling 'Something news'.

Mr. Perez may have had the thought to twitter Felicia personally, as per "journalistic integrity" that people expect from game journalists, and in his antagonistic manner, gave her that question.

 

[Cheesepower5]

And Nolan North may have not, but it has been used against men too.

Examples, please? When has a video games journalist called a man who does voice acting for video games a "glorified booth babe" or anything remotely analogous?

As said above, even NPH. And this is the one that get's backlash.

Actually, if you re-read Owen's comment it looks like he's saying that these comments are as dumb as if someone had attacked NPH for being an attractive man with geek cred.

I recall numerous forum posts complaining about people like Neil Patrick Harris and Will Wheaton not deserving big spots on E3 because of not really representing gaming, I'm not going to dig weeks back into every game tabloid's comments and forum posts to link you specific examples. Think back briefly. This is one lousy journalist who has rude things to say to one woman, it's not a horrible defeat in the battle for women's rights ; in the developed word, women's rights is winning. Clearly so if this is the big story outside the Islamic and third world nations that's bringing girl power down.

He's a douche yeah. But if we're suddenly deciding to fire all douches, why the fuck is it still hard to get a job?

Because most people are smart enough not to start controversy their workplace doesn't want anything to do with under their real names on social media.

Yeah. I agreed with you on that one, genius. It's a legit reason to fire him. I still question the controversy, and it's obvious he's an asshole. Just, probably not a sexist. I HIGHLY doubt you know him personally.

 

[Cheesepower5]

Double post, ignore this.

 

[Eyelicker]

It would be like working for Heat magazine and tweeting Lady Gaga and calling her a useless ho. Not exactly a good move.

Really?!? Magazines like heat do nothing but insult, belittle and embarrass celebrities, and no one get's fired. Fame is a Faustian pact.

I want to say you were just being silly and splitting hairs on the analogy, but if you weren't:
It'd be like a Revolver journalist going up to Nergal (Behemoth) and telling him he's nothing more than a baby with a guitar barely fingering the basics, and asking him what he's done for the metal community in terms of technical skill applied to similar yet wholly different instruments.

(For clarification: In Demigod and The Apostasy Nergal's style features heavy inflections and fingerings found more often in a citar. But it's used to an effect that helps the flow of the song, creating an artistic merit on it's own. Revolver also had an article a couple of years ago practically worshiping him and Dani Filth, with pictures of them beating up Santa.)

Okay, I get it bro, you like metal, don't have to shove it down our throats with that extremely cumbersome and convoluted analogy. No one cares. Thanks for the laugh though. And no, it's nothing like that at all.

Yeah, it's definitely bs that it should be like that, but the fault mainly lies with the general immaturity of "gamers". Sorry, but as long as the internet and online games exist you're at risk of being insulted by 14 year old virgins.

The thing is, everyone is misrepresented, when I see the 7ft tall steroid mcfacepuncher average male charactor I chalk it down as either tongue in cheek, trying to be attractive to the opposite sex, or (most often), just bad character design design.

It's definitely not just 14 year old virgins. If you go and look at moviebobs 'Tropes vs MovieBob' vid and look at the facebook comments you can see that. Professional guys calling gaming a 'Solely male space' and all sorts. As well as some pretty noxious 'Get away from our games' videos.

I don't think male video game characters are designed to be attractive to female gamers. But that is a whole different discussion. You are right that both sexes suffer from bad character design though.

14 year old virgins was a blanket term for losers with limited female experience. Like I said, everyone seems to fall into one of the 2 camps I mentioned.

Games are developing, writing and character design is improving for both genders.

 

[NiPah]

Hmm... I wonder what Ryan Perez has "provided to gaming." Oh, wait, nobody asks that question because he has a Y chromosome and it's not a good question.

I always hate it when people do this... You just asked the question, you just invalidated your entire point.

 

[JohnDoey]

i think sexism is wrong(and most -isims)
but an extreme response by the employer to sack the offender doesnt help anyone. he'll probably walk away harbouring more ignorance and hate due to the injustice he no doubt sees he was subjected to.

you can not force tolerance, only hope to show/teach/lead by example.

Firing him help's Destructoid's image, or it at least prevents a black mark to their image. They lost next to nothing in firing him, as this guy was an intern and hadn't contributed anything of note other than a sexist question on Twitter.

They're not firing him to teach him a lesson. They're firing him because he publicly made an ass of himself and, by proxy, the company he worked for.

i understand that side of it, good publicity etc etc. but to clarify, i meant this doesnt really help the battle gainst sexism.
CAPCHA: i like you

But nothing he said was sexist, he was being a dipshit but not sexist.

 

[EHKOS]

We attack and criticize people all the time here. From EA and Activision to Notch. Do we all deserve to get banned for it?

 

[Eyelicker]

In my view it's different doing an expose on a celeb and insulting them in public. Like the guy who called Stephen Fry homophobic slurs. If he had been employed by a magazine he would have been fired on the spot.

Homophobic =/= questioning someones relevance

He didn't say anything overtly sexist, everyone assumes that because he said "booth babe" and because she's a girl and he's a guy

I think his point was basically he felt she was overrepresented because she's an attractive woman in a niche where that's rare, he, in a moment of poor judgement, questioned it in an obnoxious manner.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

In my view it's different doing an expose on a celeb and insulting them in public. Like the guy who called Stephen Fry homophobic slurs. If he had been employed by a magazine he would have been fired on the spot.

Homophobic =/= questioning someones relevance

He didn't say anything overtly sexist, everyone assumes that because he said "booth babe" and because she's a girl and he's a guy

I think his point was basically he felt she was overrepresented because she's an attractive woman in a niche where that's rare, he, in a moment of poor judgement, questioned it in an obnoxious manner.

I think his assumption that she must be a booth babe because she is a woman involved with gaming and general geek stuff is pretty damn sexist.

She isn't even that dolled up most of the time.

 

[joshthor]

Does a man deserve to lose his job for some opinions he holds privately?

no. however, opinions he throws out on a public forum like twitter directed at a glorified gaming starlet while working for a gaming website causes a lot of negative press for that website. At any job you are expected to be a representative of the brand.

For instance: Say you work at best buy - your working in the Television department and you decide to announce "YO CUSTOMERS! INSIGNIA TVS SUCK! GET A SAMSUNG!" you would probably get fired - while your not providing mis-information, you are putting a negative light on something that can effect best buys bottom line. (insignia tvs have a wider profit margin at best buy than samsung because they own the brand)

now, should this guy get continued bashing? no. thats stupid. but its also the internet - where trolls run wild and try to ruin the lives of people they dont like.

 

[Eyelicker]

I think his assumption that she must be a booth babe because she is a woman involved with gaming and general geek stuff is pretty damn sexist.

She isn't even that dolled up most of the time.

The assumption wasn't "she is a woman in gaming ergo can be nothing more than a booth babe"

It was "she is an attractive woman ergo she receives a disproportionate amount of attention for what she has done and is milking it"

Sex plays a part in the assumption, but it's not "sexist".

 

[OtherSideofSky]

What was being said prior to this, both to and by him? These don't sounds like the kind of remarks that happen in a vacuum: They sound like something that gets said during a heated argument. What else was going on in that conversation could change the context of the words quite a bit (for example, did he start slinging insults while his partner was perfectly calm and professional, or was he insulted first and then responded with insults and accusations of his own?).

 

[runic knight]

Well, I find this kind of stupid. I can understand Destructoid firing him, they have an image and they knew this was gonna be a shitstorm. The people here though, well, I think most are kinda hyping this up a bit much. If any of them use the word "misogist" in describing this guy though, well, I honestly can't take them seriously.

Ok, bare with me now, but wasn't his tweet essentially "why are you so popular in gaming? You are little more then a boothbabe. You don't add anything creative to the medium."

Now, I don't agree with the guy, but I don't see that as sexist, least not in the way a channel of youtube comments can be. He seems to be pointing out that she is used as a female that gamers relate to because of her personality, and is used as such solely because she is female (hence the comparison to a booth babe, as they are used for looks.), and that other then that, she doesn't contribute anything to games as a medium. Esentially, she is marketed for personality and charm in a similar manner a booth babe is marketed on sex appeal. Just pandering to a different reaction from gamers. Say what you will about the validity of the statement (I find it pretty lacking and definitely a bit bitter myself), I can't find that as sexist though. He can make a legitimate argument from that concerning how she is marketed and it is not a generalization or derogatory statement about women, rather pointing to an obvious aspect of gaming marketing itself (which is kinda notorious for being sexist).