ATK | pidge @ halloweiner · @pidgezero_one
1st May 2016 from TwitLonger
if you're a dude who is against smash sisters, read my really good post!
My oh my, this topic just won't seem to go away and seems to surface every once in a while seemingly out of nowhere. Do you think SS is generally a good idea, maybe could use some improvements, maybe not, maybe you have other altruistic ideas for incorporating underrepresented demographics, but are tired of hearing arguments over it? That's fine, you can close this, this twitlonger isn't for you.
So what is Smash Sisters, exactly? From their facebook page: "Smash Sisters is a series of women’s crew battles featuring the Super Smash Brothers games. These events are designed to bring new and veteran Smash gals together in order to boost overall competitive participation. This is a progressive organization and format that is excited to adapt to the needs of women in a community that is always changing." That's their mission statement. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, I'll save you the effort of confirming whether or not it is, in fact, Really Good. Here is what Smash Sisters participants and their confidantes have had to say about it:
- "#SmashSisters was one of the most positive experiences I had at a tournament. I made new friends and played Smash. What else could I want?" - Lyric
- "#SmashSisters at #G3 was so much fun! Repped team NorCal! All these women are amazing, I'm so glad to have been apart of something like this" - Corimon
- "The #SmashSisters crew battle and it inspiring [my girlfriend] to want to play Melee with me every time we had the chance! #G3Memories" - DarkDragoon (spectator)
- "One of the coolest things about #SmashSisters was that i got to see a lot of players with different strengths. Patience, strings, space, etx" - Nyani (crew captain)
- "Even if I hadn't played in a long time, I still managed some decent play (and one kill I am still immensely proud of) before having my butt elegantly handed to me by Kaitlin Sweet, a.k.a. SadDad. Losing ignited my urge to maybe try to play a little more — all part of Sun's plan." - Chelsea, who was there as a reporter and was encouraged by other women to join the event for fun's sake, initially hesitant
- "It was great to see the community and camaraderie between the women who came together because they love a game" - HOLZ!
- "This event was only a means of meeting each other and not trying to undermine our skills, I reassured her. Every participant hopefully understands that the end goal of being a competitive Smasher isn’t just to be the best woman, it’s to be the best. [...] Later that night, she and I discussed the day’s ongoings. She confided in me that while she performed well and took a substantial amount of stock, this crew battle only invigorated her to take even more the next time. She didn’t only want to strive to be a great female Smasher, but a great Smasher, period. Additionally, she told me that this event also helped her bond with other women more." - Milktea (one of the series cofounders)
- "I recieved a tweet from a guy saying, 'hey, my lady roommate is training really hard because of these crew battles,' which is great. That's the whole point of this." - also Milktea
Hell, I'll even add to this: I joined Smash Sisters at Genesis 3. I'm a Smash 64 player and 5-year veteran in the competitive community. There was no Smash 64 or Brawl crew battle, but I joined Smash 4 for the hell of it. It was fun getting to play with old and new friends and forming new bonds in the form of chanting for our respective teams. Everyone there wanted to do well and support the team regardless of their level of skill and comfort with competitive play. Later, one of the women who was on my team wrote a very kind message for me remembering how I cheered her on in the crew battle and encouraged her even though she didn't take any stocks from the other crew (although I think she was fighting Nyani, and she's hella good & taking any stocks from her to begin with is a tall order LOL). The fact that she remembered this instead of feeling discouraged about her performance was profound for me and exactly the kind of thing I want to see continue.
"Damn, Pidge, this sounds awesome! But why are you just reposting quotes I could have easily found by googling 'Smash Sisters' and reading articles on the topic like http://www.lilchen.com/blog/smash-sisters-event-organized-by-and-for-women/ and http://www.redbull.com/us/en/esports/stories/1331771374567/smash-sisters-unite-at-genesis-3?"
Well, friends, you see, unlike yourselves, there are plenty of people in this world who are not familiar with this crazy advanced and difficult technology we call "Google". These people are also largely angry that Smash Sisters even exists.
"Hold up, why would someone be pissed that something which is clearly a positive force in this community even exists?"
The arguments come in a few different forms, namely three very common and very misinformed arguments:
#1: "These events are segregating the community by gender."
Well, no, in fact a little bit of common sense completely invalidates this argument. Joining Smash Sisters does not contribute to your event cap. There is no rule of Smash Sisters stating that you cannot compete in any main brackets if you choose to participate in this female-only crew battle. It's a side event at pre-existing tournaments consisting of women who mostly have ALREADY JOINED the bracket. So where's the segregation?
"It's segregation because men can't participate!"
Well, sure they can. Men like ESAM, Wobbles, and HMW have commentated SS events. Men like Shi have offered to record the events. Men like Bear, Toronto Joe, and Dr. Z have offered to work with us to schedule and make sure we have enough resources to facilitate the event. Men like DarkDragoon support the event and see the positive encouragement it provides the women in their lives. Men like Tafo create well-thought-out videos on the topic and offer their support and encouragement to see these events continue.
"No, you don't get it! It's segregation because men can't PLAY in these events!"
Ohh, so now the jealousy comes out. But hey, guess what, there are going to be plenty of side events in your smash career that you won't be able to participate in. Such as:
-Crew battles for regions you don't belong to.
-College circuits that don't include your college (or maybe, like me, you aren't a college student).
-Smash 64 brackets you don't own a controller for.
-Other games at the tournament when you already hit your event cap.
-Amateur brackets for people who didn't get very far in bracket. LOL JUST KIDDING
-Smash Sisters events when you're not a woman.
But only one of these examples is "segregation", right? Think about how ridiculous that sounds, and then consider not saying it anymore. This is an open-and-shut case, the debate is over.
This of course is not even taking into consideration the existence of events like ARFI, a women's only standalone tournament with pot bonuses and out-of-region attendance, which women in the community were also very divided over: however, this event was not affiliated with Smash Sisters in any way, Smash Sisters is a series of side event crew battles. And yet there are still people who will point to things like ARFI and conclude that Smash Sisters is segregation. Pray to the gods of Google that these people do not end up working with you on a research project any time in the near future.
#2: "These events are telling women that they need their own events because they're bad and can't compete with men."
First off, this argument is completely ridiculous and all you'd have to do to realize it's BS is simply ask anyone who has participated in Smash Sisters. Here, I'll save you the trouble: Remember how I participated in Smash Sisters at Genesis 3? I also, as part of a team, placed very high in one of the main brackets at this event, Smash 64 doubles, which consisted entirely of men with the exception of me and two other female players. It was also arguably the most difficult Smash 64 doubles tournament in history to succeed in. How could this have possibly happened if the existence of Smash Sisters conditioned me to not compete with men? Well that's just the thing, it doesn't, and the argument is bullshit.
I mean, shit, just look at the quotes I copy pasted earlier:
- "Losing ignited my urge to maybe try to play a little more"
- "hey, my lady roommate is training really hard because of these crew battles"
- "She didn’t only want to strive to be a great female Smasher, but a great Smasher, period."
Or better yet, just ask one of the co-founders of the events, Emilywaves: "We’re not interested in creating side bracket and women-only events that are completely isolated. We really want it to feed back into a co-ed competitive bracket." I lifted this quote from one of the two articles I linked earlier. Yet another argument that could have been put to rest by googling. Next.
#3: "These events are just unnecessary because the community isn't unwelcoming toward women at all."
The fact that this is even a thing people say is pretty out there: first off, you, as a dude, do not get to decide whether or not a community full of mostly dudes is welcoming to women or not. That's up to the people who are actually affected by a community's welcomingness to women... aka, the women. And most women have different opinions on this topic, really: in my case, the smash community was not unwelcoming to me AT ALL when I started in 2011, and likewise most dudes who make this argument will follow up with "and my sister/friend/girlfriend/etc agrees with me SO THERE" (which really just raises questions as to how that conversation really went down, but I digress).
But what does it mean for a community to be "unwelcoming"? Plenty of women have shitty experiences dealing with certain men at tournaments. Lecherous staring, backhanded compliments, unwanted stream exposure, assuming she's into you just because you were matched up in bracket, not getting the hint when she doesn't return your FB messages, literal repeated sexual harassment over the course of a few years, etc... Bad enough, really, but not every woman has these experiences, in fact many of us have gotten along just fine with the dudes of the community and have had no such complaints. So why do the rest of us still agree that it can be unwelcoming?
That's partially because a) we know that other women in the community HAVE had these experiences and little is done about them because complainants are rarely believed by those in power in a "he said she said" situation and don't want to get witch-hunted for making an "accusation" like many Smash women in the past have; and b) the fact is that it is much easier for some people to break the ice in an environment when they see somebody else they know right away they can identify with, and the absence of that gives an unwelcoming impression to people who are outside of their comfort zone.
Reason A is self-evident and I won't go into it here as it's a whole 'nother topic. Reason B is something that's really important to go into detail with because of recent discussions surrounding Smash Sisters.
About a month before Emilywaves proposed the first Smash Sisters event (before it even had a name), Milktea wrote this article in defense of experimentation with female-only tournaments: http://www.lilchen.com/blog/stop-asking-about-all-female-tournaments/
This particular excerpt is pretty important:
" It wasn’t until I wiggled my way towards the back that my eyes met those of my petite female friend, who was tucked away in the corner. As I struggled to plant my butt on a barstool, she smiled and grabbed my arm. She lowered her voice and whispered into my ear … “I’m so glad you made it! I really didn’t want to be the only girl here.” Wat. I should have been enjoying my Dark n’ Stormy that evening, but instead, it felt like someone had plowed a tennis racket through my face. My youth was spent being one of the few girls around a bunch of dudes thanks to gaming, my tomboyishness, and other factors. It never occurred to me that this was out of the ordinary. I was astounded that it took me so long to realize the following:
- Being one of the few women in an environment dominated by men is not the norm for all women.
- Some women prefer to be surrounded by plenty of other women.
- Skewed gender ratios in environments can cause discomfort to women who are not accustomed to it.
- Not all women are the same. Not all women are me. There is no one type of woman, and that is okay."
And where have we seen this recently?
"I went to my first tournament two years ago. When we got there, it was all boys, and I though 'Wow, this sucks. I don't have anyone to talk to'" - Lyric, as quoted in http://mashable.com/2016/04/29/super-smash-sisters/#4RF_pTJKYOqm
This particular comment from Lyric has received a lot of backlash. If you ask me, the backlash is really fucking pathetic. All this is is an example of what Milktea described above, which is completely inoffensive to anyone who has a shred of empathy in their bodies. And if you know anything about Lyric, which is not hard to do if you actually go to tournaments and follow the Smash community, she's really active in the community with plenty of male Smasher friends, and was even one of the people quoted at the start of this very post. Guess what guys? She's not the only woman to go to a tournament and feel like this. She's just one of the ones who stuck around and knows now that most of us are pretty great. But that's the exception rather than the rule for people who are not comfortable being the only woman in the room.
Note that Milktea's blog post was linked in her subsequent blog post about Smash Sisters, and that second post is one of the first results when you google 'Smash Sisters'. Noticing a pattern here? Namely, a pattern of easily-offended men who would rather share their pre-conceived opinions about the topic of the day everywhere within earshot instead of doing their homework on the topic?
Even worse: it's not only people who won't do their homework. It's people who ARE completely aware that Smash Sisters has been received well by the people it seeks to include, and STILL have a problem with it, who STILL like to chant "segregation! segregation!" like they forgot the words to Another Brick in the Wall.
From my observations on the general public's reception to Smash Sisters, there seem to be two main types of guys who have vocal reactions to it:
1) Men who appreciate and support its mission and initiative and understand the positive outcome, and maybe even get involved with the organization or production of an event. See: HugS, Esam, Tafo, Wobbles... People like this know how great the smash community is, and want to break down any barriers they may not know about yet so that everyone can enjoy being a part of what this extended family we've all formed together. May have different opinions on how the event should be run, question its effectiveness, wonder if another format might be more suitable, wonder if results discussion may be alienating those who underperformed, etc, all questions and concerns shared and encouraged by female participants and the event's organizers who firmly believe in experimenting with this project. Nothing wrong with that, men who participate in this discourse are clearly in it for the community and are doing good things.
And 2) People who haven't been paying attention to the content of this entire post and continue to make the same tired and demonstrably wrong arguments against it.
People in the latter camp unfortunately DO NOT CARE what women think about an event for women. They will sit around and ask each other "why are there so few girls in Smash, what can we do about it?", but their intent is not genuine. They are faced with a well-known initiative that DOES help and intend to break the ice and feed more female competitors back into the co-ed bracket, but it's not good enough. And the reason it's not good enough is that it's an event that's for women. Women playing smash together and enjoying themselves is a bad thing, because it means women are doing things that don't involve interaction with men 100% of the time.
To them, women are supposed to be at smash tournaments for them to look at, make backhanded compliments on their skill level to, and think about asking out on a date; the women's own enjoyment is irrelevant. Women who gather together in a male-dominated community are threatening, because we expose people who think this way. And once a woman makes it verbally clear that she's here for her own enjoyment and wants to interact with other women, she receives enough backlash that may make her say "this isn't worth it, I'll go play Counterstrike instead", like angry mobs are trying to do to Lyric. Guys who sit around and ask how to get more women into the community, but don't listen when women tell them what the answer is, are more interested in getting each other's opinions on the topic because they're asking the question for their own benefit. It's like a couple of dudes at their favourite bar pitching a "ladies drink for free" night: they're not in it because the bar is a great place where anyone can enjoy themselves (which it probably is otherwise), they're in it because they need something to gain from it in the form of interacting with other women and theoretically increasing their dating pool. They see an initiative that helps get women involved in Smash, and they say "no, not like that! it's supposed to involve ME!!!"
Emilywaves has also said "One of the things we didn't want to do is let it become a spectacle. We don't want it to be the kind of thing where people are just looking in ..." It was supposed to just be a fun and encouraging environment for the women who chose to participate, not something to put on a show for all the people watching at home (which is also offensive to some people who likewise don't really get what this is all about). But SS has indeed become a spectacle in some ways, which is both good and bad: it's good because more exposure = more participants; it's bad because more exposure = more backlash from swathes of people who just don't get it and don't want to get it. And once enough of the latter camp get together, they do things like sabotage events by telling participants events are cancelled (which Mayday caught and banned the perpetrators for life from all future events from, shoutouts to him). People like that need to be told to fuck off, and unfortunately they'll only listen to other dudes. That's why we need more of you guys to listen and just get it, and then go off of that to be a force for good.
Still not convinced that women's side events are generally a good thing? Maybe question why you want more of them to play in the first place.
- PZ_O