StarCraft 2 Tournament Boots Player for Rape Comment

[veloper]

Fine, I'll be the one to say it.

Trash talk is okay. Rape in the context of competitive gaming means defeat by a huge margin. It's obviously not a threat.

If it were up to me, I'd allow this kind of talk, even against a woman. Freedom of speech to trump over quickly wounded egos.
The consequence of being an asshole should be that people will think and say you're an asshole and that knowledge can only benefit people. Everybody wins and everybody grows a thicker skin as an added bonus.

The only real mistake the guy made is that he should have known he was playing in a nanny environment.

I disagree. Trash talk is not ok, at least not in this environment. If you want to trash talk friends, that's one thing, but this is not a casual situation. Professionalism and sportsmanship should mean something to a professional sport, and this kind of behavior demeans the players and the sport itself. That's especially important in a sport that desperately trying to gain legitimacy outside its own community. And double-standard or not, this is a step in the right direction. Trying to argue that what this guy said is perfectly acceptable because that's "what everybody does" is not.

And free speech has nothing to do with this. The tournament is a private event. If the hosts want to deny this kind of rhetoric, they have every right to.

Sure in the context of the law it has nothing to do with freedom, but in practice it still does, because house rules may still determine what you can or cannot say.
I strongly favor letting people say their piece and NOT babysitting teens and young adults. The first leads to assertiveness while babysitting promotes dependence.

 

[HardkorSB]

Women are less visible in competitive gaming tournaments thanks to sexism, marketing strategies overlooking them, and gender norms that treat games as a male hobby.

Hayda's comment is just one example of how the eSports community pushes women away.

What also pushes women away is this type of articles, always portraying gamers as sexist assholes.
This reminds me of that dumb "I don't care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet..." article on The Verge, where the author presented the scientific community as sexist and essentially anti-women.

You are just as responsible for pushing women away from the community as these asshole gamers are.
A female gamer will read your article and think: "Well, if the eSports community is that sexist, I don't want to be part of it".
Good job.

 

[RicoADF]

Okay. I realise that. It's still dumb.

I'm of the opinion that `trash-talking` is a thing that makes us all look bad and should go away. Though I'm not sure if this counts as trash talking at all because tweeted it in general, rather than saying it to her during the match. Either way, it's stupid.

I had a guy start saying this to me once, when we were competing in a friendly way (seeing who's DPS was better in WoW).
He got half way through saying it and went kinda `Oh, no wait you're a girl that's kind of weird to say that to you`.
My response wasn't `That's right- be ashamed!`, it was `It's a dumb thing to say to anyone when you think about it`.

I agree it's a dumb thing to say, not something that I personally would be saying to other players. That said people do say it as jokes and banter in friendly manner and I don't believe in controlling what others say.

As I said I'm wondering if he was booted because it was a girl or because of what he said. If the former then I consider that wrong, you can't have 2 sets of rules (ok to say it to guys but not girls). If it's the latter and they were informed as to their code of conduct then yes the guy is an idiot and was correctly kicked for breaching the rules.

Basically it comes down to "I need more information" to comment and/or make an opinion.

 

[Evonisia]

All this news tells me is that I have a desire to see a new word arise to replace "rape" as a synonym for "defeat" in the gaming community. Let's get "thrash" to be an insult, it would be somewhat cool. "Rape" is a silly word, after all, and is almost always going to get you (rightfully) shit on.

 

[Scorpid]

Good on them for disqualifying him. There are few enough female professional female gamers and they don't need threats of rape, joking or not to be laid against them. I know "rape" is common nomenclature for overwhelming victory in games but it still shouldn't be because of how sadly prevalent rape is in the world today is and sexist the connotation itself is. The dude should think of better ways of trash talking without implying she should fear for her real life safety in such a direct way.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

well it was certainly tasteless

It wasn't Tasteless! Why are so many people bringing him into this discussion? He did nothing wrong.
He's also one of my favorite casters. <3

Oh, come on, Starcraft fans... You had one job, ONE JOB! 'Do not make rape comments', and you blew it!

Hang your heads in shame.

I really love that way of thinking. One person does something idiotic and gets punished for it by professional organization plus the community: BLAME ALL PEOPLE WHO ENJOY THE SAME THING AS HE DOES ANYWAY!

ok im not familiar with the -esports scene or anything, but i was under the impression athletes had to be more... professional, that being said maybe im using the term athlete here very loosely

 

[Headsprouter]

What a classless moron. It actually makes me feel like a moron to call him classless, but I'm not sure how else I can describe it...just really low brow and obviously didn't think very much about making that tweet. I mean, you and your friends might laugh at that joke, but your twitter followers aren't your close friends. They're an audience.

 

[Riot3000]

So guy made a unprofessional comment got canned like he should nothing wrong with some things in a pick up basketball will not fly in the NBA so that professional environment makes a difference.

Now for the "reason why women don't go into competitive sports" is the most sexist thing about this more so than the "rape" comment. I mean can no one not smell or sense the benevolent sexism there that it hurts. That is why a lot of these kind of articles and tones have been rubbing me the wrong way. I mean I thought gaming was run by dirty liberals and this and other stuff sounds like sneaky Trad Con rhetoric.

With that said I am pretty as long the rules are consistent then really there is no need for an uproar.

 

[thewatergamer]

Framing this as "Just another way the eSports community pushes women away" is stupid editorializing. His behavior was unprofessional and caddish, but making a bigger deal out of it because it was in reference to a woman is simply another form of sexism.

^ I'm not denying what the guy said was a terrible thing to say, he's an asshole and deserved what came to him quite frankly, HOWEVER I am sick of this narrative of "This is yet another example of how E-sports push women away"

Maybe the reason women don't tend to show up in E-sports is because none of them are that interested to begin with? Too my knowledge they have tried to have an all women tournament but it didn't happen because not enough female players actually wanted to participate...

Can we stop with this obvious bias please? I get it this was a stupid and terrible thing to say and absolutely he deserved what he got but painting the entire e-sports community/event and claiming "yet another way that the e-sports community pushes women away" is an incredible generalization...

If this was gender flipped nobody would be talking about it and it CERTAINLY wouldn't have an article on the escapist...

 

[Pinkamena]

I have no objection to this guy being taken out of the tournament but I do take exception to:

joking about rape is never ok. Ever.

Because I disagree. Plus what this guy said what not a joke, it was a reference.

I agree, anything can be joked about.

 

[Temko Firewing]

I basicly NEVER comment.

so take this to heart escapist: "Hayda's comment is just one example of how the eSports community pushes women away." is just about the most fucking wrong (factual) editorial sentence i've ever read on your website.

EVER.


There are female only tournaments.
There are mixed gender tournaments (but the one male only tournaments got shit to obvlivion...gg double standards)

He apologised for a comment that was insensitive/retarded. as he should have. different genders = different social norms.


but seriously? i've NEVER heard of "women" being pushed away from e-sports. Ask fucking scarlet in her recent interview with the New Yorker. Ask Bee. Ask any other (of the very very small handfull) of high-end female gamers. out there. Ask in CS:S or CS:Go, ask in League. or Dota. You can bloody ask the one women who was "well known" in SMASH.

...there is basicly no group of people less worried about gender, then the e-sports scene. (Fucking CHESS is more segregated).


So ye. Fuck this comment.

 

[TechNoFear]

How times change....

In 1975 Muhammad Ali repeatedly called Joe Frazier a 'gorilla' in TV interviews; "It will be a Killa and a Thrilla and a Chilla when I get The Gorilla in Manila"

 

[JimB]

Hayda's comment is just one example of how the eSports community pushes women away.

No. If you had said that things like this is one of the reasons women feel pushed away from the e-sports community, you would be right as that is a factual statement. By saying that the e-sports community pushes away women, you've just called me and millions of others who had nothing to do with this sexist assholes. Blanket statements like that has to be kept out of any article ever, because they are literally always wrong when referring to a large group of people.

Not really. When talking about a community, it's treated as a single entity, not a collection of smaller, single entities. For instance, when saying Walmart maximizes its profits by encouraging employees to sign up for welfare benefits, that is true even though the greeter at the front door has no part of that policy-making process. Walmart is composed of its employees, but it is not its employees. The eSports community is composed of gamers, but it is not all gamers.

 

[JimB]

So in short: Woman loses badly to better male player and gets him disqualified over trash talk.

Woman notices male player violating the conditions of participation in a tournament as well as announcing an intention to commit a violent crime, when his statement is interpreted literally. Woman reports the violater. What a crybaby, expecting her opponent to follow the rules of the tournament and to not say he intends to commit penetrative physical assault.

Anyone should be able to enter a space, but when you try to make everyone change that space to accommodate you, you're something of a social imperialist and douchebag at that point.

Honest question: Is it not social imperialism to only allow people to enter your space if they change to accommodate you? If not, then what's the difference?

It's a competitive sport; trash gets talked in competitive sports.

There's trash, and then there's announcing the intent to commit a crime. I don't know what the law is like where the tournament took place, but where I live, that statement is technically assault.

Nobody would have batted an eye if this comment was directed at a guy.

I would have.

So now you've skewed the tournament in favor of women because they can just get offended at all the comments and win the tournament by offended>ban elimination.

That is not even close to what happened.

 

[TallanKhan]

To my mind, he got what he had coming, if you take the incident as a whole then it's inappropriate conduct for a professional sportsperson.

However, I did roll my eyes at the whole "Its never ever ok to joke about rape" bit, to my mind no suject is a no go area for a joke, provided the joke isn't itself told with malicious intent. Persoally I think rape jokes are at the least in bad taste, but thats my opinion and I have no right to try to push it on others.

 

[Schadrach]

So in short: Woman loses badly to better male player and gets him disqualified over trash talk.

Woman notices male player violating the conditions of participation in a tournament as well as announcing an intention to commit a violent crime, when his statement is interpreted literally. Woman reports the violater. What a crybaby, expecting her opponent to follow the rules of the tournament and to not say he intends to commit penetrative physical assault.

Where does the tournament actually put the line regarding trash talking?

Anyone should be able to enter a space, but when you try to make everyone change that space to accommodate you, you're something of a social imperialist and douchebag at that point.

Honest question: Is it not social imperialism to only allow people to enter your space if they change to accommodate you? If not, then what's the difference?

I've mentioned this before, and what I always notice is how gendered it is: A man entering a predominately female space is expected to adapt to the space, but a woman entering a predominately male space expects the space to adapt to her.

Here's the real question: When an individual enters an existing environment, should they expect the environment and existing persons present to change to adapt to them, or should they expect to adapt themselves to the environment and persons within it? Because the answer *should* be wholly unrelated to gender, but in practice it *isn't*.

It's a competitive sport; trash gets talked in competitive sports.

There's trash, and then there's announcing the intent to commit a crime. I don't know what the law is like where the tournament took place, but where I live, that statement is technically assault.

So, better ban anyone who makes a comment about "killing" or "murdering" their opponent at a competitive game as well, right? No? Why not?

Nobody would have batted an eye if this comment was directed at a guy.

I would have.

You likely would never have heard of it unless you were watching the match in question if the comment were directed at a guy, because it wouldn't be considered newsworthy.

So now you've skewed the tournament in favor of women because they can just get offended at all the comments and win the tournament by offended>ban elimination.

That is not even close to what happened.

Yeah, that is some hyperbole right there. So long as the line for trash talk is the same for everyone, and followed for everyone, I don't see a real problem unless the line itself is gendered.

Maybe women are less visible because there are fewer female competitors.

Especially when a concurrent female only and men & women tourney shows more favoritism towards female players than male players.

Shh, it's like chess. When there's no good reason why men and women can't compete evenly, it's sexist to have a men's tournament, but not a women's tournament. Like chess.

This of course, ensures that the women aren't competitive with the men, by giving them the option to not have to compete with some opponents (having to deal with a lesser selection of opponents means you don't have to be as skilled, which means you'll tend not to be as skilled). You also see this in chess, where there's a large gap between female chess players who only play in women's tournaments and those who play in general tournaments.

 

[ILikeEggs]

Woman notices male player violating the conditions of participation in a tournament as well as announcing an intention to commit a violent crime, when his statement is interpreted literally. Woman reports the violater. What a crybaby, expecting her opponent to follow the rules of the tournament and to not say he intends to commit penetrative physical assault.

While the guy doing the trash-talking was an idiot, and probably deserved to be disqualified, you come off as massively pedantic and/or childish when you say 'he announces his intentions to commit a violent crime'. Please, don't be that guy.

 

[ILikeEggs]

Honestly, even if English was his first language, his tweet is not an announcement of his intention to commit a violent crime, within the context of a competitive video-game setting. Is it disgusting? Yes, yes it is. However, if you have even the slightest knowledge of competitive video-game culture, you'd know that everyone trash-talks and a lot of gamers talk about "raping" their opponents. I've even heard girls use similar phrases, but I don't recall any of these so-called "threats" actually carried out unlike what JimB seems to think.

 

[Denamic]

Where does the tournament actually put the line regarding trash talking?

It's a general code of conduct. Trashtalking or just generally being a dick will get you booted from most tournaments. This case is blown way out of proportions because he did it to a woman. If he'd said the same thing to a guy, no one would even bother to report it, and he might even have gotten away with just a warning. He did not actually threaten to literally rape her, and we all know it. He meant that he was about to severely beat her within the game. That much is obvious. This bullshit is just another form of sexism, really.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not against him being booted for trashtalking. Good riddance. It's the public reaction that's retarded.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Go look up his quotes...

No. If you thought it was important enough, you would have pasted the quotes yourself.

Good fucking riddance. Way to make the whole e-sports scene seem totally mature and respectable. What a fucking idiot.

Are most sports mature?

If he said "Gonna go rape some dude" this would not be news worthy and no one would have cared.

Think about that for a minute.

Yep, this is all about oppressing women white knighting.