Well, this all went just about where I feared it would, hence my original “often contentious” comment. Can we all take a deep breath before this goes too far south?
I’ll be honest with you - getting to my current perspective on this subject was a very long and hard journey. If these issues had come up 20 years ago, I’d have been right there with the folks defending the way things are and using many of the same arguments. It took me a lot of time and a lot of life experiences to grok that my reality is not everybody’s reality. It took me years to accept that I have a lot of advantages in this world because of my ***, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. But I do, and if you’re reading this, there’s a pretty good chance you do to.
You don’t have to agree or accept that the lack of women in game dev or the treatment of women in gaming is a problem, but you should recognize and respect the fact that many people (both men and women) do. Those people don’t need to be proved wrong. We don’t need anecdotes, straw men, or red herrings that show everything is A-okay in the land of games, or to demonstrate that people who aren’t women have also experienced bad things in this world.
The status quo rarely needs to be defended. It’s got the upper hand. The home team advantage. It’s the incumbent that everybody votes for when they don’t know who to vote for. If you feel a strong need to defend the way things are, you really should ask yourself why. Why does the subject make you angry, and why is the mere suggestion of change so threatening to you?