In the early 1990s, the cleaning staff at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam installed a small sticker that looked like a fly in the center of each urinal. When men stepped up to the urinals, they aimed for what they thought was a bug. The stickers reduced spillage around urinals and it cut bathroom cleaning costs by 8% per year.
In gaming we need to do the opposite. Man installed aiming stickers on woman for far too long, now we need to cut these mothers f^ckers out, to take sexual harassment to 0%.
This week, hundreds of woman came out on Twitter to tell their experiences with sexual harassment involving man in gaming and esports. Main people accused:
The Netflix documentary, Athlete A, showed us that the USA Gymnastics is the perfect example of a system where sexual harassment is part of the culture. It's culture because it involves both the predators and the people who know this shit is happening, but don't say or do anything to save the company or themselves from public backlash.
The team doctor, Nassar and several gymnastics coaches abused more than 500 athletes, including 9 Olympians, and both the president Steve Penny and team coordinator Márta Károly covered it up for a decade.
Method's Twitter cover said 15 years of progress (minutes ago, they just changed it). All of it went straight to the trash thanks to the actions of a few. But why Method got completely cancelled while Twitch, doing similar things, is untouchable?
The same reason why the US Gymnastics keeps training woman today. They are involved with bigger players than just the public. Method is a famous team with their biggest concerns around sponsors and streamers, both of them didn't hesitate to leave, even though there was "15 years of progress". They did something wrong, it's done, people will find another big team to sponsor or partner with.
The US Gymnastics, like any other big industry leader, was attached to huge players like the US Olympics Committee and the FBI. So cancelling them would be impossible. Twitch, today, IS gaming... you have to be naive to think they don't have relationships with the biggest players out there. Good luck convincing Amazon that a moral change should be the priority for Twitch. They will fire the problem and on to the next thing.
There will always be a group of people taking advantage of an unjust situation and harm it even more. Just like protesting against racism brought people looting the shit out of stores, here, there will be woman falsely accusing man of sexual harassment, harming innocent people and the stories of the true affected ones.
Not gonna lie, the industry has some f^cked up people around. But there's a lot of good too. The support I've seen to all the woman affected has been incredible, we'll solve injustice faster than most industries, and this is why:
Gaming's founding ground was created by people who got rejected their entire lives, which generated sick personalities looking for revenge after gaming became popular and rich, but it also built a huge amount of leaders who empathized with the idea of rejection and created a company or a team upon the values of inclusion.
Companies leading our industry still have bad people inside, but I believe the majority are good. Their mistake was to remain voiceless for the ones who got their rights stolen. Now, they know a change could be made if they speak, and it has to be immediate.
