Eleine 🤧 · @Eleine_Sun
24th Jun 2020 from TwitLonger
Why Didn't You Come Forward?
I have considered coming forward about my experiences for several years now, but have always been cynical about whether it would accomplish anything other than getting a flooded inbox and more backlash. Gaming is one of the industries that has managed to regress as others progressed, and it felt more hostile to women than ever after GamerGate.
It's 2020, and after seeing that Harvey Weinstein literally hired ex-Mossad agents to de-legitimize his accusors, I cannot believe there are still so many people who can throw around "why didn't she come forward about this?" and "why are they making this public accusation and ruining someone's life?"
Those who hung out with me during my years in esports will probably remember that I never had more than maybe 1 drink in a night, even though I was literally hosting open bar after-parties. Dozens of people have offered me drinks over those years and all of those parties, and I always turned them down. I haven't had more than 1 or 2 alcoholic drinks in a single night since 2011, because I learned to be incredibly careful.
MLG Columbus 2011 was held in June of that year. I had begun commentating Starcraft 2 several months ago, though I was still a relative nobody, though I knew most of the other casters and players and had a few friendships. I had just turned 21 and had very little experience drinking. As it turns out, like many Asians, I'm practically allergic to alcohol, but was too inexperienced to know it at the time. Alcohol will make me feel incredibly tired and sleepy, as well as make me feel like I am having an asthma attack.
I was able to go to a small hotel room after-party (I think it was Artosis's hotel room?) where maybe 15-20 people were hanging out at a time. I had something like 3 vodka drinks that night. I will admit to being silly and flirtatious with a few people at the party, mostly women, before I got quite sick and threw up in a trash bin in the corner of the room–the one time I ever have or ever will get drunk to this point in my entire life. I remember Drake helping take care of me who was very nice to me as I got cleaned up.
I decided to leave the party then, while I was still awake enough to walk the maybe 1-2 blocks to my hotel. That's when a pro player at the party, who I hadn't interacted with at all, offered to walk me back. I said no, I don't need it, and headed out. He began following me, and repeatedly insisting I needed escorting. I remember that the entire time I carefully walked down the stairwell, and down the sidewalk to my hotel, and even through the lobby of my hotel, I was repeatedly insisting that I did not need him to escort me and trying to get him to stop. He kept following me.
I finally made it to my hotel room door and thought maybe that he would leave then, but instead, he pushed the door open after I unlocked it and walked into the room after me. I had become very drunk at this point and was trying to hold onto the last vestiges of consciousness, and tucked myself into bed with the covers pulled up to my neck, telling him I was okay and made it back and he could leave now.
He did not. He spent what felt like the next 30-40 minutes trying to rape me. He did everything from lean over me and repeatedly try to kiss me as I kept turning my head and saying no, to pulling the covers off of my repeatedly even though I kept pulling them back up, and even got on the bed and straddled me. I think the only thing which saved me from my fate was that I was wearing a corset I made that was tightly laced. He could not figure out how to take it off of me the entire time even after getting on the bed, and eventually finally left the room. At that point, I was beginning to sober up from just being so upset at it all.
Some time later, the 2 friends who I was sharing the room with returned, and I was sitting in the bed incredibly upset. I told them both exactly what just happened, and the player even forgot his team jacket in the hotel room so there was more than ample proof. I am unbelievably thankful that I had just enough left in the tank to keep saying no over and over and over and over and over throughout the encounter. I texted many of my women friends at the event to warn them about what happened. I felt awful and violated and angry.
Some time in the morning, the player even had the gall to send friends to loudly bang on the hotel room door for several minutes trying to demand the team jacket back. I don't remember this interaction much since it was my friend who answered the door and told them to go away (I believe this friend still has the jacket somewhere, even though I joked about burning it).
A day or two layer, while waiting for my return flight, I realized that I was sharing a plane with that player's coach. I ended up sitting next to the coach, and, with enormous difficulty and embarrassment and awkwardness, managed to tell him my account of what happened, thinking that the direct coach would be the correct person to report it to.
I don't remember too many details of this conversation since it was so long ago, but I do remember that the coach kept making excuses for the attempted rape. He said that the poor kid had just been dumped by the coach's sister, that he was young and stupid, and at some point he even said something along the lines of being glad it happened to ME, because I was strong enough to fight him off? I felt so deeply disgusted and re-traumatized by that conversation afterwards. I told several friends about that reaction from the coach. Nothing ever happened to the player and all of it was swept under the rug; I don't know if the incident was ever even brought up to higher ups at the team.
Even at age 21, very much my young and stupid era, I knew that this was the only possible reaction. I had enough cynicism and foresight even then to know that if I tried to take the accusation public, I would have transformed from the Girl Who Commentates StarCraft to the Girl Who Cried Rape (I said something along these exact lines to friends at the time). I knew that there was no chance that he would face real consequences, but that I would be harassed and never taken seriously if I did so. At the time, I didn't know anyone higher up in the pro team's hiearchy to report the incident to privately.
Determined to not let this asshole take away the community I was so passionate about, I tried very hard to simply forget the incident and assumed I would not frequently see this player at too many events because they were not frequently qualified/entered, and tried to move on, but I would never trust being more than faintly buzzed around people ever again.
I don't think I know any women in esports who don't have at least one experience of sexual assault, nevermind all of the sexual harassment and flirtation we are so used to deflecting and defusing that we don't even really remember it. I am so sorry for all of those years that I thought I was fine and acted like nothing had ever happened to me; all of those times that I was complicit or enabling bad behaviors by staying silent; any statements I ever made that gaslighted other people about their experiences because I didn't feel I had experienced those issues. I am so sorry for how little I tried to change things in all of those years I clutched tightly to my Cool Girl phase. I am so, so deeply sorry for all of those times that I felt or said "I'm not like other girls" and cast other women as somehow at fault for being the victim of harassment. No one should have had to be as cynical, as careful, and as powerfully positioned as I was during my days at Twitch in order to survive all of those other years in the industry without being the victim of major abuse.
I hope that maybe more people will take accusations seriously. I hope that maybe my story can help you see that we're not crazy for thinking that reporting abuse wouldn't amount to jack shit. I hope that people realize that the problem isn't just a few bad, rapey apples, but a systemic choice by tons of organizations to ignore shitty behaviors because they don't care about the safety of so many people, absolutely knowing that these things happened.