Sometimes it feels like people want it both ways. On the one hand it's absolutely natural that "real gamers" (a very male dominated demographic) react with toxicity when game journalists attack them, then when gamers are being extra toxic towards minorities and women, all of a sudden it's "we need hard stats on who is committing these atrocious toxic remarks". What's the slur for white male? Is it commonly used when people try to flame white men on CoD?
This is impossible to even make sense of. Where did I say it's "natural" for people to react in any given way or draw any distinction between different situations like you're implying? My point is that in general you're going to have a hard time making a legitimate point on the issue if you don't put effort into detailing how you're determining exactly who is doing the things you're criticizing, since otherwise you are literally just assuming you're right by default. For example, do you think non-white men never say anything sexist? Do you think white women never say anything racist? Safe to say you don't, since those would be dumb things to believe, but the conversation tends to act like it's the case because painting a picture where one demographic is the entire problem is easier to digest than looking at the bigger picture, which is that the mostly anonymous nature of online gaming tends to give people an excuse to be open about their bigotry, regardless of who they are.
White men are the majority in online game so we're the most common ones doing it, sure, and there are obviously societal aspects that encourage more prejudice from the majority so that helps make it even more common, but it's not the whole story. It's important to acknowledge it's not as simple as just saying one group of people are the bad guys if you want to have any chance of making progress on the issue. Racism from women, sexism from non-white people, homophobia from people who aren't straight white guys, etc. Bigotry doesn't become acceptable based on the demographic engaging in it, it's wrong no matter what and that needs to be addressed. The process of addressing it will naturally tend to focus more on white men than other groups for reasons outlined above, but entirely overlooking the same behavior from others doesn't help anyone and in fact just gives the shittier members of the white guy demographic reason to justify their persecution complex.
You didn't say that. I'm sorry I wasn't clearer, my point is that the two views I presented are typically held by the same people. If you're not one of those, then go on and disregard what I said. But again, consider the fact that the "default" identity online is being a white, straight male. And there aren't any slurs for that. If you're a woman, or black, or lgbt, people will seize upon that to push buttons. But to insult a white straight male, there's no slur. Would that kind of environment look like that if white, straight men weren't mainly the offenders?
As for bigotry, I whole-heartedly agree that it's never acceptable. But identifying an endemic problem in a specific demographic isn't bigoted. ---
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