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Twitch allowing more nudity after disproportionately banning female streamers. Twitch confirmed its policy banning nudity was sexist.
Of course, on seeing this news I immediately wondered why it would count as "punishing" women to prevent them from doing something men don't generally have the option of doing (that is, making money by flashing breasts). Why don't we say it "levels the playing field" to prevent women from using their sex appeal to crush their competitors on a gaming platform? I was going to do a great Simpsons callback and everything, "Twitch became a hardcore pornography platform so gradually I didn't even notice," I had this whole post I was going to write about the sexual appeal of females versus males, maybe do a little amateur evo-psych ("as a treat!")--
--and then the whiplash hit.
Twitch Reverses Policy Allowing ‘Artistic Nudity,’ Citing AI’s Ability to Create Realistic Images
Here is Twitch's reversal of its... reversal? The meat is straightforward:
I guess someone realized that if you allow streamers to turn your site into OnlyFans with Vidya, then the women are going to drop their tops and the men are going to just... use filters? (I don't actually know, I don't use Twitch because I play video games and have no interest in watching others do so, but I am decrepit and out of touch so whatever. I have an Amazon Prime account so sometimes I pop over to Twitch if there's an incentive or something but otherwise it's a mystery to me.)
Now I'm left pondering the apparent Fisherian runaway of human beings trying to become--virtually, at least--teenage-presenting (cat?)girls as quickly as possible. I hadn't previously considered the impact of AI on parasocial human relationships, and now I'm having a hard time considering anything else. But I also have to wonder--is the new policy re-sexist? Will it make any difference at all?
EDIT: From the helpful comments below, today I learned that Twitch is not just a video game streaming site, but also streams other activities like art creation; that the AI nudity concerns are not limited to filters/avatars but to art being produced on Twitch; and that Twitch's reverse-course was likely driven at least as much by AI "nudification" concerns as anything. I remain interested in the thought processes that led to the first change-in-policy, and in knowing what (if anything) actually happened on the server side to cause the rapid about-face! But I appreciate having the bits I did not understand explained to me.
The policy is broader than "don't flash your breasts." According to your link it prohibited any content that "deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region." I have no trouble believing that women were modded for content that men got away with. If a guy did a squat stream that prominently displayed their ass (maybe for form demonstration reasons) would Twitch mod it for sexual content? What if a woman did the same? I have no trouble believing Twitch would mod the woman but not the man. I think there is a pretty straightforward sexist implication to "men are allowed to do this thing but women aren't."
Because the conception of Twitch rules as existing to level some competitive field between streamers is nonsensical? Should Twitch ban streamers who are too good at games, because they'll get more viewers by being better? Should Twitch ban face cams, because more attractive streamers will get more viewers? Or maybe mandate face cams! No hiding for you uggos, you might get undeserved views! Make everyone use a voice modulator to have the same voice, some people might have nicer voices that lead to more viewers!
Wat? How many men on Twitch do you think are currently using filters to become women to get people to watch and sub?
You didn't need to put this here, it's apparent from the rest of your post.
Wat. What fraction of twitch streamers do you think are involved in this "Fisherian runaway?" What fraction of, say, the top 100 or 1000 streamers?
When women start getting treated equivalently to men for sexual assault/harassment, THEN AND ONLY THEN will women deserve "equality" in this regard. You don't get to simultaneously claim the same ability to show off while holding extensive privileges in controlling how people respond to your doing so.
I do not think one injustice justifies another. We can, and should, get rid of both.
I don't understand this sentence. No amount of women "show[ing] off" justifies sexual assault or harassment.
Bullshit it doesn't. If I flash my fat stacks of cash and expensive sneakers in the gheto then get jumped by several thugs and robbed I would be getting what I deserve. Same with women.
You don't "deserve" to get robbed because you're stupid about flashing your cash. The people who robbed you are still criminals who should be prosecuted. People might say you were foolish and should have known better, and maybe some people would say you were "asking for it," but you did not literally deserve to have your money stolen. The same applies to women "showing off." A rapist is still a rapist even if the victim was flashing her tits in a back alley. If you think it's okay to harass and assault women because they're showing off, you think it's okay to steal someone's stuff if he's not guarding it sufficiently. And that would make you a rapist/robber, my friend.
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The fact that ghettos in which having nice things means people can steal them with impunity exists is a societal failure state. That people should be encouraged to take precautions because certain police forces and judicial systems fail to to do their duty (or are prevented from doing so) doesn’t change that.
Someone who wears a Rolex into the ghetto and gets mugged may be stupid or naive, but they don’t ‘deserve it’. If they are robbed, it is the state that has failed them.
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Empty words. Those pushing for gender equality have proven time and again that they only care about equality when women get the short end of the stick. You need to prove that you will actually get rid of both here rather than stopping once you get the benefits (EDIT:) if you want to convince me to support you.
The problem is that behavior by men towards women that is perceived as sexual assault or harassment isn't perceived as such when done by women toward men. Men have to "justify" behaviors that women get to just do with no consequence. Women showing off therefore either needs to be more restricted than men doing so or women need to put up with all the behaviors from men that men have to put up with from women.
Please, please, when you make this argument explicitly name a specific example of a behavior women can do that men can't. It'd help the conversation so much, and prevent it from getting bogged down in each side repeatedly stating their beliefs without coming into contact with the other side.
See just about any instance of "sexualization". For some specific examples, see Julia Serano's Why Nice Guys Finish Last and my response at /r/theschism.
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I agree. Society does not take sexual harassment and assault of men by women nearly as seriously as it should.
I don't see how this follows. If the thing is bad we should want to have less of the thing, even if the improvement we make is not necessarily equally distributed among all impacted groups.
I don't think that's true; there just isn't enough sexual harassment and assault of men by women to justify taking it much more seriously.
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Men don't need protection from sexual harassment by women. It's a trivial problem.
Men suffer different problems than women. Not necessarily more serious problems, but different ones.
If we are looking for men and women to have equal rights, we need to examine the ways in which each gender is currently harmed by society.
For example, in the current system, men are harmed by an anti-male education system which rewards female traits and punishes male ones. As a result of this anti-maleness, 60% of college students are women. Furthermore, this college experience, which is heavily funded by taxes, often rewards its graduates with tax-funded sinecures that provide little value to society.
Meanwhile, nearly all of dangerous jobs are performed by men. Men are 6 times as likely to die at work than women. The death rate for women at work is less than the death rate for accountants. Dangerous jobs, which are nearly exclusively performed by men, pay less on average than white collar work. Meanwhile white collar work is performed nearly exclusively by college graduates, the beneficiaries of anti-male discrimination.
Instead of worrying about women catcalling men, worry about the actual problems the affect men.
How would you make the current education system more pro-male?
IMO the reason most college students are women is women more strongly follow ideas they see others holding, and education is the thing everyone thinks you're supposed to do.
Put more emphasis on test results and less on subjective grades.
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100% agree with all of this
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Sure, but I'm not going to waste my time and effort supporting improvements that are only seen by other people--especially people who have related privileges relative to me--unless they demonstrate a willingness to do the same for me. As I said before, people supporting gender equality now have a very high bar to meet in that regard, as they have a very strong history of saying they'll support men too to get my support and then never following through.
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Not justifies, is. You don't think a woman showing a lot of cleavage or leg at work might be analogous to other actions considered sexual harassment? That is, if it makes men think about sex or uncomfortable about where to look when talking to the woman, surely that's not dissimilar from men making overheard suggestive comments.
There's probably some line. A bunny suit or something is probably out. The vast majority of clothing women wear to work? Absolutely not.
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Women showing off: OK. Unattractive men noticing: sexual harassment.
Notice with your eyes, not with your hands.
Nybbler expressed it in sneer-adjacent form, but I think he's right.
Why - from first principles, you're an alien looking down at the world - is it sexual harassment to make comments about the amount of clothing a woman is wearing? Especially if the clothing is deliberately designed to be sexually attractive.
"comments about the amount of clothing a woman is wearing" is a very broad category of statements, multiplied by a very broad range of contexts.
The vast majority of that space of events is definitely not sexual harassment.
If you precisely described the content and context of a specific comment in enough detail to determine which category it fell into, I think the 'why' would ussually be a lot easier to explain and most people would agree most of the time.
I think the biggest problem here is the part of that space where someone imagines that if they said a specific thing in a specific context, it would be considered sexual harassment by someone. I've never been accused of sexual harassment, but I share the experience of thinking carefully about the thing I say and holding back sometimes out of worry of giving offense, and can sympathize with people who are frustrated by it. But if you've also never crossed that line into actually being accused, consider the possibility that you're just wrong about where the line is, and the category of things that you think of as 'someone would accuse me of sexual harassment if I said this and that's absurd' are actually mostly things that no one would accuse you of sexual harassment for.
(In point of fact, I am involved in managing the ban list and safety complaints for a rather large social club with mostly young people, and I've never seen a complaint that didn't involve physical contact or explicit threats of violence lead to any disciplinary action. I really just think the situation on the ground isn't as dire as people imagine, as is true for most things in the modern world)
The second biggest problem is all the ambiguous parts of that space where the judgement isn't entirely clear-cut and some people may disagree, and how that space gets exploited by the typical culture-war driven mess of toxoplasma, ragebaiting listacles, 'engagement' reporting, inaccurate anecdotes, etc. etc. etc., same as every other topic we talk about. This has several parts to it:
-I don't think the laws against sexual harassment are actually dangerous in the way these comments imply, and in fact I think they're still heavily skewed towards defendants (as may be correct!). Not my area of expertise, but I definitely have the lived experience of, every time someone says that someone got sued for sexual harassment and lost and it was a crazy absurd thing that should have been fine, when you actually go to look at teh legal documents detailing the case they are much much worse and more justified than the anecdote that's being shared online (think the McDonalds coffee lady). Exacerbating this tenfold is the fact that many of these cases are settled in settlements where the victim signs a nondisclosure agreement that doesn't bind the defendant, ensuring that only one side of the story goes public (yes, even in states where those agreements are unenforceable, victims don't know that and are scared to push it)
-The online ecosphere has the usual incentives to lie, cheat, and steal on this topic. One side pushing absurd standards and stringency as a costly signal about how seriously they take this and how seriously you had better take it, the other side promoting absurd cherry-picked anecdotes to the forefront in an attempt to ragebait for clicks and to paint a skewed picture of the actual situation on the ground. People on tiny sights making outrageous claims in order to get attention, people on other tiny sights excoriating those claims out in order to get attention. Typical stuff.
-The actual idiots and bad actors, from young people with no perspective talking about things they don't understand, to manipulators and opportunists taking advantage of this range of charges for social or economic gain, to genuinely ill or disturbed people pushing their own distorted views or perceptions, to etc. etc. Again, the typical stuff.
I agree. As I said in reply to someone on the other side, I think these discussions would instantly 100x in usefulness and connecting-of-disagreeing-ideas if people simply chose specific, detailed examples of scenarios where they think the standard for sexual harassment is too low or whatever, and then analyzed those.
It can both be true that most instances that are actually prosecuted are egregious, and that the law on paper criminalizes a wide variety of benign behavior and thus significantly discourages it. I also am not sure how important it actually is though.
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That is still considered harassment.
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