Many of you are no doubt aware of this already, but I just wanted to highlight a recent appalling example of the rampant misogyny in the gaming community online: the harassment that feminist pop culture analyst and video blogger Anita Sarkeesian has gotten for her Tropes Vs Women Kickstarter project, a video project designed to “explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.”
Her YouTube page has been inundated with comments calling her, among other things, a “Dumb ass nazi [obscene gender-related slur],” “faggo.. I mean lesbian,” and “the reason why womens are the inferior gender for the whole history of mankind.” IRONY ALERT: while some are calling her a Nazi, or comparing her to the KKK, others are denouncing her as a “bolshevik feminist jewess” and a “fucking ovendodger.”
And still others are defacing her Wikipedia entry with all sorts of vile shit. (Here’s a screenshot.)
Here’s her discussion of the harassment, which includes screenshots of some of the comments.
An Escapist piece on the harassment, which is where I got the quotes above.
A Jezebel piece, “When There’s So Much Bullshit Online, You Forget How to Feel.”
A piece on The Mary Sue, “The All-Too-Familiar Harassment Against Feminist Frequency, and What The Gaming Community Can Do About It”
Kotaku also weighed in, leading one commenter there to note that similarly misogynistic comments appear there all the time.
Meanwhile, over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, temple117 garners 138 net upvotes for a post urging poor oppressed men to “Fight back! Sexism exists for males too, support these men in their expose of gender tropes in video games!”
And, joy of joys, Men’s Rights buffoon Bernard Chapin has weighed in on the controversy as well. After dismissing the harassment — using a “funny” voice, apparently the most powerful weapon in his rhetorical arsenal — he suggests that women complain about video games because games are a male thing, and women are jealous that men are paying attention to something other than them. “Whatever the male is enjoying himself at,” he says, “it diverts him from taking orders; that’s got to be the focus of their ire.” Then he accuses Sarkeesian of being without “honor” because she’s asking for money to fund her project. (Might want to take that critique up with your pal Paul “Donate Today” Elam, dude.) His video is below, if you want to waste your time with it.
But before you get to that, here’s something a bit more encouraging on the gamer misogyny front: Comedian/actress/gamer Aisha Tyler’s take-no-prisoners takedown of the misogynist assholes who attacked her for allegedly ruining an Ubisoft press conference at the recent E3 gaming extravaganza, apparently by being too female or something. Here’s a screenshot of her comments, and a surprisingly un-disgusting Reddit discussion of the controversy.
Here’s Bern:
There is no such thing as “reverse discrimination.” It’s just “discrimination,” no matter what group it’s aimed at.
The “dumb dad” trope is damaging to the image of men. IMO, it is a form of gender policing. Take the most recent example — that of the diaper commercial that portrayed fathers as completely clueless when faced with the task of caring for their own children by themselves, without their wives. Fathers are most often shown as “stupid” or “clueless” when it comes to domestic chores. It is culturally viewed as humorous not because the assumption is that men are stupid, but because the idea of men doing “women’s work” must be strictly policed by making them appear hapless or shameful while performing it.
@Argenti Aertheri
“something like 1 in 20 men have, or will be, raped, contra the 1 in 5 number that NWO’s having a hissy over”
There’s that 1 in 5 number again, you quoted the party line. Can you even comprehend thinking for yourself?
Argenti: while there may be a point about men in video games, it’s not nearly as damaging as oh, I don’t know, the representation of women in just about every form of media.
Misandry? Kiss my rosy red ass. If these fools have problem with misandry (that word makes me wanna hurl), they need to start having this conversation with other men and cleaning their own house. See blitzgal re: gender policing.
Atari!! Is this 8-bit hero a man or woman anyways?
I think they mean “safe from political correctness run amok”, so basically the same thing, yeah. Not like they’d ever actually say they want to act like douchebags, they’ve got to obfuscate it with how we’re just “too PC”. (Ergo my agreement with Idylle that some common decency would really be an excellent start.)
“it’s not nearly as damaging…” — agreed, that’s the point I was trying to make to Idylle.
And if it isn’t clear in that screencap above, you’re the square, not the dragon. (RUN!!)
@Argenti Aertheri
“Since you’re never going to actually give a flying fuck about why rape is seriously under-reported, I’m not going to compare apples and oranges with you.”
And since you’re never going to admit how frequent, heinous and life destroying false accusations are, why should any man give a crap about womens problem? Parrot another lie and watch the hatred grow. The gang at the top love funding you gals, women are so easily manipulated. Just like unthinking herd animals, natural born communists.
No kidding. It’s also frustrating that these same whiners always blame feminists for their problems instead of criticizing our sexist society.
It’s also absurd for them to demand that feminists take on all of men’s problems, when MRA’s sure don’t give a shit about women’s problems. It’s a double standard, and like most double standards, women get the short end of the stick.
I just realized that. Movies like Kindergarten Cop, Daddy Day Care, and The Pacifier all have the theme of men being brought down a peg by having to do “women’s work”. It’s less of a message of “men suck at taking care of children” and more of “it’s funny for men to have to degrade themselves and do women’s work”.
I just wish female characters weren’t so overly sexualized. Jessica Rabbit comes to mind. No, I don’t think she was a video game character, but she was in a very popular movie that kids saw. She’s an embarrassment to the female gender. And she’s not the only one, whether video game, cartoon, or live action character. So which female characters make you cringe?
Oh and NWO? Even if Berkley really did have 0 rapes during that period, not just 0 reported rapes (and holy shit is that a difference you fail to grasp) — that says absolutely fuck all about the nation at large. Contra the CDC data which was a randomized phone survey of *drumroll* the nation at large.
As for the 1 in 5 number (these are all direct pdf links) —
“18 percent of women surveyed said they experienced a completed or attempted rape at some time in their life” DoJ, 1998 (pg 2)
“Our findings indicate that about 20 million out of 112 million women (18.0%) in the U.S. have ever been raped during their lifetime.” DoJ, 2007 (pg 3)
“Nearly 1 in 5 women in the United States has been raped in her lifetime (18.3%) (Table 2.1).”CDC, 2010 (pg 18)
And all 3 methodologies are sound btw, unlike trying to extrapolate the reported rape rate from one university to be the actual rape rate across the country (that’s a failing grade in research methods, you really have so many issues there I’m not going to try).
@Argenti, it’s Squall from FFVIII
On the “dumb dad” trope, I don’t think it’s damaging or stigmatizing at all. The “dumb dad” is the hero, the comic of the comedy. The wife is the straight guy who ruins the fun. His abandoning of adult responsibility is not treated as truly toxic, but rather as just leaving the wife to things she is expected to be doing herself. Fathers get to have fun/be fun, mothers get duty and drudgery in this trope.
Men don’t do charity drives in the Owlyverse now? Do tell
@hellkell
“Misandry? Kiss my rosy red ass. If these fools have problem with misandry (that word makes me wanna hurl)”
Really? Let me know when your daily dose of ridicule by the feminist MSM includes this.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2076646,00.html
Probably after enough generations of women ridiculing men, men are returning the favor. It must be a shock to womens universe encompassing ego to be ridiculed in return. So much so that women had to run to big daddy crying foul, make it a hate law to ridicule women. Did women stand up for men? Did women demand adds be pulled from time? Did women call Nancy Gibbs a vile, putrid piece of trash? Oh hell no. Women as a whole joined in the laughter, and every year they up the ante a little bit more.
All it’d take is one woman to just up and wallup the crap outta one these pieces of shit. Men as a whole might think, hey women are willing to fight for men after all. But the talmud of feminism prevents women from striking another woman for mens honor. Hitting a woman is like hitting the face of God.
Shadow, they might, but women give all the monies to dumb animals. Or something–the Owlyverse is a scary and confusing place.
Wow. For once NWO’s comment isn’t the most offensive one I’ve read today. It’s not even close. Seriously, NWO, lift your game.
I had no idea that sexism was so bad in computer gaming (my reflexes, suck, so I mostly play strategy games or boardgame sims; and I usually play them with people I know). I did know that gamers are often unbelievably defensive about their hobby and misogynists are often unbelievably defensive about their privilege, so I guess if you combine the two you get… well this shitstorm of hate.
I’m personally amused that the MRAs organizing the anti-Tropes Vs. Women campaign had to solicit a bunch of volunteers to make a video for them, handle promotions, and come up with ideas for “misandry” they could complain about… whereas Sarkeesian, as far as I can tell, did the whole thing herself.
But to NWO, that’s Sarkeesian sitting in the street and crying while the MRAs do all the real work.
“I did know that gamers are often unbelievably defensive about their hobby and misogynists are often unbelievably defensive about their privilege, so I guess if you combine the two you get… well this shitstorm of hate.”
This might be the best summary of the problem ever. I have the reflexes to game, and love BloodRayne, in part because there’s just something hilarious about pulling off decapitating multiple Nazis at once only to cut-scene to boob giggle (hilarious or sad, I can never decide which, but decapitating Nazis)
It’s really aggravating in video games when you have female characters who are otherwise interesting and nuanced, but still dressed to such ridiculous extremes. One of my favorite characters from the Final Fantasy series (besides Aeris, natch) is Edea from FFVIII. She starts the game as the stereotypical “evil witch character” but then turns out to be (SPOILERS OMITTED). I love her, but of course her dress is…..TITTIES.
The clothing for female characters in video games is freaking ridiculous, and yes, it’s way worse than it is for the male characters. At least the male characters who are wearing chain or plate mail are actually covered up. I was playing some dungeon crawler this one time….not Bard’s Tale but something similar to that, and my female character had the breast bounce animation even while she was wearing PLATE ARMOR. WTF?! Yeah, I get it — all these hours and all this money was spent on perfecting that titty bounce. I don’t give a shit. If a character is wearing plate mail, her boobs are not going to bounce!!
And don’t get me started on how they went and messed with Samus. You’ve got the one female video game character who gets to flat out be the hero without her gender being the central focus of her character, and they still gotta throw her in those ridiculous hotpants, or whatever the hell she was wearing in Other M.
The “humiliate men by making them do women’s work” idea goes back all the way to Hercules; Hera is angry that his labors brought him so much fame, so the next time he gets in trouble, she makes him serve a queen, wearing women’s clothes and spinning while the queen wears his Nemean lion skin.
@Argenti Aertheri
“And all 3 methodologies are sound btw, unlike trying to extrapolate the reported rape rate from one university to be the actual rape rate across the country (that’s a failing grade in research methods, you really have so many issues there I’m not going to try).”
So words on a screen, unverified, makes for sound methodology? If it’s printed on paper by Big Daddy it must be true? The official stance of the feminist party line is 1 in 4 women are raped in college. It’s printed on paper so it must be true. Gullible sap. Lukily we got those weapons of mass destruction away from Iraq. I know it’s true, it was in all the papers. Al-Qaeda is everywhere, we need more security forces to protect us from all the terrorists. I demand a police state for my protection.
So which particular reports are you most likely to believe? The ones that say college sexual assaults are rampant so we need more security forces in schools. The ones that say terrorist activity is on the rise in north america and we need more police forces, or the ones that say Al-Qaeda is massing in foreign countries and we need more military forces abroad. Or do we just need more police, homeland security and military across the board. Funny how every report we see seems to entail more security. Women really are such an easy mark.
I couldn’t help it, I started thinking about this. I feel absolutely certain that there was no way for Anita Sarkeesian to win, in NWO’s eyes.
Premise: a whole bunch of people call her “cunt”, “jewess”, etc.
Her reaction:
If she expresses unhappiness, NWO gets to say “crybaby”.
If she expresses happiness, NWO gets to say “attention whore”.
If she expresses complete neutrality, NWO gets to say “see, the feelings of MEN mean nothing to her.”
cendare — that’s always the case with NWO. The only way women can win in the Owlyverse is by not being there (not existing that is).
@hellkell
It’s hard to forget when Owly jumps on every chance he gets to remind us :p
And I’m usually the main defender of trash talk, but that shit needs to be cleaned up for like, everything, in gaming.
@blitzgal
“Fathers are most often shown as “stupid” or “clueless” when it comes to domestic chores. It is culturally viewed as humorous not because the assumption is that men are stupid, but because the idea of men doing “women’s work” must be strictly policed by making them appear hapless or shameful while performing it.”
Incredible. Men being portrayed as inept buffoons has been turned into another example of womens oppression. What’s next? The reason why women have a virtual lock on homeless shelters is because men are hogging all the grates. Just another example of male privilege, acting like they own those comfy heating grates. Men are such pigs.
Practical Berkley math — um…Berkeley NY or Berkeley CA? Because NWO that link above is NYC and your previous math was using Berkeley CA enrollment rates…
I’m going to use CA as it’s a big college, law of large numbers and all that.
4,109 students enrolled (Fall 2010)
Undergraduate gender: 53% female and 47% male (Fall 2011).
~2,178 women enrolling each year (2,171.77 technically, but you can’t have a fraction of a person)
Using the CDC data, because it’s the most complete and best organized, 1.1% of women were raped in the year before the study. So 1.1% of 2,178? Just under 24 (about 11 completed, 8 attempted and 15 drug/alcohol facilitated).
Using BJS data we’d expect to see “36 percent of rapes, 34 percent of attempted rapes, and 26 percent of sexual assaults were reported.” That works out to about 4 rapes, 3 attempted rapes, and 4 drug/alcohol facilitated rapes. In other words I’d expect the Berkeley (CA) reported rate to be about 16 rapes, 12 attempted, and 16 drug/alcohol facilitated (assuming all students are there 4 years and thus total enrollment is 4x the above) — totaling 44.
Looking at Berkeley CA, instead of confusing them with NYC, shows these rates — Forcible Sex Offense: On-Campus 20; Off-Campus 31 = 51.
Huh NWO? Doing the math right proves Berkeley is slightly more rapey than you’d expect? What’s that now?
Footnote — I’d think Berkeley may simply have a slightly higher than average reporting rate, but it could be the base rape rate.