But what you know… I don’t go to cons.

A Portland David Mikula on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikula) is a freelance art director, with current work for Wieden + Kennedy; EA is one of their clients.

No hard link, but a lot of connections.

I wonder what other brilliant ideas they came up with? Maybe, “Commit an act of wrath! Take a picture of yourself assaulting a gay/black/Jew/foreigner, then find another one and repeat for more chances to win!” … What could go wrong?

It’s a shame Dante never described a special circle of hell for douchebags who make it in marketing. Perhaps they could be forced to play crappy EA games for all eternity while ugly, smelly, socially awkward demons grope and try to kiss them, all the while being bombarded with ads that demean them and insult them.

This sort of thing really IS part of the reason. People have a limited tolerance for insult, and an even more limited tolerance for personal risk.

Before I continue: I am well aware that the bad behaviour is limited. Few or no mature, sensible, reasonable geeks and gamers do this stuff. It’s usually those who are on the fringe of the industry, or the very small percentage who are either genuinely misogynistic, or general assholes to everyone.

But frankly, that’s enough!

And it really DOESN’T help that the majority of the mature, sensible, reasonable geeks often don’t believe us. We can’t even complain without being told we’re oversensitive or hysterical!

Some women do get chased off before even starting. Some get into it for a while, but get exasperated and wander off into a different industry (sometimes related, sometimes not).

Some get into the industry, stay, but become hypersensitive to it and get reputations as ‘dragon-ladies’. Or ‘feminazis’, or ‘man-haters’.

A very few get into the industry, stay, and learn to handle it with grace and poise. My hat is off to those women.

And yes, I have met a few women who have been in the industry for an extended period of time (five or ten years) without encountering this misbehaviour. But in my experience, that is very, very rare.

So … please believe us. Please try to support us. And when you see a person treating women as public-breasts (or otherwise being an asshole), tell them off.