I totally understood at the time, the need for my classmates to be accepted in the peer group, and how that worked against their better judgement to buy their silence. I understood that my nature of turning the other cheek and wanting to do my best work often worked against me, but also knew of no alternative.

What I never understood was the teachers’ complicit role in my daily hell. Even if they saw their only success in academic results, they failed when in desperation I took the only escape route I knew at the time: I tanked from being their only straight-A student to failing and leaving to work a checkout in Year 11. (Regional towns are often short on options for underskilled and undereducated youth).

As fate would have it, I’ve recently gone back to complete my education and am now beginning teaching in high-school, and boy is that hard sometimes. But never so hard that the kids should have to suffer as well. The teachers who have mentored me have taken a different tack to your primary school teacher: they see the knowledge that “kids will be kids” as a reminder to nip things in the bud.

Children and adolescents genuinely need and appreciate appropriate boundaries, and probably the most rewarding aspect of teaching so far, is building a rapport with all students while (and probably due to) refusing to let the animals run the zoo. Teachers describe this key aspect of behaviour management as “withitness”. Maybe your teacher lacked it? She wouldn’t be the first.

I’ve been very lucky with my mentors so far, and I’m sure it helps that I embarked on this career with some experience as a parent. Anyway, I didn’t come here to brag, not in these early days anyway! What I would like to do, is to promise you and your readers that some of the people you entrust your kids to, are the kind who will try and pick up on attempts to demean them and instictively think “Nuh-uh. Not on my shift”.

It’s a genuine shame that so many internet admins and mods don’t have the same “withitness”, or even an awareness of their need for it.

By coincidence, I recently came across #1reason in my own web search for stuff I’m writing about sexism and trolling, in response to my own dealings. Here’s an outsiders (not tech-savvy, non-gamer) perspective: I thought it was bad on some motorcycling forums, but to learn what pervades and is accepted in the gaming realms, it’s just mind-blowingly awful in a few sections, and comes across as slightly crummy in so many others.

I’ve no solutions or shining light to offer on that. I wish you every success in getting more and more people on board. Because, yeah. Currently, in many places, it just sucks.

They didn’t.

But I learned to stand up for others. Even alone, I learned there was more honor is loosing the honest right than there was in ignoring it unscathed.

I’d say I probably didn’t feel like the space was particularly anti-women because I had friends there and didn’t feel unwelcome myself personally. But that was after a fair bit of hazing, which is kind of shit. But having said that, I didn’t associate with the term feminist back then, and I also didn’t really look at it through that lens. I’ve grown a lot in the last few years, particularly with learning more about feminism. I said some pretty stupid shit years ago (haven’t we all?), but at least I can say I wouldn’t say it again. As for the space itself, I think it was pretty cliquey, and it became pretty hostile pretty quick (especially since negging was introduced, I think that was a clincher), which I think explains a lot about why it died out, I reckon. It was a unique space, and I made some life-long friends there, which I’m thankful for, but it was also a very problematic space. As many online communities are. I don’t miss it, as anything I missed about it I still have in my life (the good friends I’d made). If it was still around and active now, I don’t think it would be the space for me. It’s catered very specifically, and there’s other spaces that cater for me a bit better. I’ve since realised you don’t have to put up with stuff you don’t like, you can just go elsewhere.

TLDR: We grow, the years pass, and we change.

I’ve also been meaning to ask; I remember a discussion on Australian Gamer Forum a few years ago where the question was asked as to whether the space there was sexist and if that drove women away (I actually think it was “girls” which bristled), and I remember you responding in the negative, that you didn’t feel like that was happening. I was wondering if you still feel that way about how the space was then? I’ve noticed that your writing has a much more feminist bent as time goes on, and I wondered if your viewpoint on that has changed?

Tres cool.

Plus, I didn’t know we both had Liams.