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:
As for Berkeley NYC — “1,652 were accepted” — I can’t find gender ratio, so let’s assume 50/50 — that gives 826 women admitted in any given year. Per CDC we’d expect 1.1% to be raped within a year, or about 9. Averaging the BJS reporting rate gets us 32% of rapes are reported (this is imprecise, but I’m afraid I’m going to be working with 0 too fast if I don’t) — that’d be 3. So assuming it’s a 4 year college and multiplying by 4 gets us an expected reporting rate of 12 rapes. Versus the 0 they report.
Could be a sampling error, eg the years that data covers were actually less rapey; could be campus police refusing to take the reports; could be that Berkeley has a lower than expected reporting rate; could be that they really do have fewer rapes than the nation at large — I wouldn’t really expect every single school to have exactly the average rate, that’s why its called an average. (Could be they all transferred to Berkeley CA throwing both sets of numbers slightly off the average XD )
Among other problems, Owly seems to be overlooking that, like, actual bad things actually happened to her. He seems to paint everyone (well, every woman) who complains about anything with the same broad brush; “I was not adequately deferred to” is equated with “people threatened to immolate me.”
NWO — your source for that data is flat out lying btw, I just checked my alma mater’s own records versus theirs. Even accounting for theirs being 2007-2009 and Pitt’s being 2008-2010, it’s just plain wrong. Pitt’s records have 24 forcible sex offenses in 2008-2009, they claim 14 for 2007-2009. Clearly someone here is wrong, and I’m inclined to believe they’re just making shit up.
We also had 2 arsons, which I’m 100% sure is the truth of things (they were major news) — your source says 0. We won the superbowl and cars got lit on fire, they’re denying this happened, that’s almost funny enough to share with my fellow Pitt grads, mostly because this place turned into pure anarchy when we won that game.
This never happened.
This is yet another example of why I tend to avoid male gamers. It’s not the games I dislike, really, it’s some of the people who play them. I’d like to think that these people were a minority, but if they are then they’re a remarkably noisy one.
The howls of outrage on Jezebel from Kotaku dudes who think that Jezebel is a radical feminist blog with plans to destroy all men over both this and the Tomb Raider reboot and quite something. If Jezebel of all places is too feminist for you to handle without throwing a tantrum, you have issues.
To those about my reverse discrimination mishap – misspoken, and duly noted.
@Argenti – I know that these tropes against women are more damaging. I still don’t think the tropes against men should be overlooked all the same.
@darksidecat – I disagree, and no offense, that sounds a lot like the reasoning MRAs use to explain why women were apparently never really oppressed – because men did all the work, were forced to go to war, forced to kill and sacrifice. But even though women were not expected to take any risk, they were also not expected to take any responsibility, which is why, in turn, MRAs shouldn’t complain about us “leeching off of a man’s world” – because throughout most of history, we weren’t allowed to take part in and help sha man’s world.
@Argenti — I did a little research. NWO’s site is getting its numbers from ope.ed.gov , which match your site’s numbers for “total on campus”. That is, anything that your site calls “on public property” isn’t included in the numbers. That’s why the arsons didn’t show up.
Oh and NWO? Of the 17 rapes that campus security reported in 2008, an entire 1 of them was reported to the city police. Campus security has a ridiculous amount of discretion in other words. In Pitt’s case it’s usually used to not turn over people caught with a tiny amount of pot, but I’m still surprised the difference is so high when it comes to forcible rape (its the category’s title, I’m not endorsing the term).
@Idylle: Re: tropes about men.
OK, tell me how many of the shows (or games) that feature dumb dads are written by, produced by, and make money for women, as opposed to how many (RAYMOND for example) are written by, produced by, and make money for MEN.
The hiring stats on gender disparities in Hollywood and the gaming industries (like every other fucking business on this planet) are heavily skewed toward men.
(And let’s not forget these are mostly straight white men).
So yeah, the problem is there-but as far as I’m concerned, it’s men’s fucking problem.
They hunted the mammoth; they can (AS SOME DO) deal with the stereoetypes of the kyriarchy that disproportionaly benefits straight cis white men instead of expecting women to do the work.
And most of all, they should avoid blaming feminists for it, and they should stop spending time berating women for not paying attention to teh menz’ oppression.
It’s a fucking cliche–men showing up in spaces where women are talking about their oppression to chant in penis-waving lockstep “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MEN.”
It was old forty years ago–and it’s getting older by the day.
cendare — ahh ok, they’re fudging the numbers to only include the campus, not all the students. Pitt’s got a large percent of students off campus, so I’m not surprised that’d sway the results.
NWO — might want to question that if Berkeley NYC has no dorms or anything like that, The NYC rape rate is far from 0%.
Idylle — well ok but do your own video then? Can we get back to discussing the horrible responses hers got?
To those about my reverse discrimination mishap – misspoken, and duly noted.
@Argenti – I know that these tropes against women are more damaging. I still don’t think the tropes against men should be overlooked all the same.
@darksidecat – I disagree, and no offense, that sounds a lot like the reasoning MRAs use to explain why women were apparently never really oppressed – because men did all the work, were forced to go to war, forced to kill and sacrifice. But even though women were not expected to take any risk, they were also not expected to take any responsibility, which is why, in turn, MRAs shouldn’t complain about women leeching off the luxuries (technology, philosophy, sciences) that men built – because throughout most of history, we weren’t allowed to take part in and help shape a man’s world.
Just as women once were denied the chance to view themselves as something more than subservient to the men in her life, the “dumb dad” tropes stifles any chance of developing the character as something more than a cheap pratfall machine. Typically the dumb dad doesn’t just experience failure as a father, but also as a husband, friend, and/or breadwinner. Just because it’s funny doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting. Ignorance isn’t bliss.
…am I seriously asking a “what about the menz?!” commenter’s permission to get back on topic?
No, no I am not. Back on topic then! “fucking ovendodger” might be the most hate I’ve ever seen packed into two words, it’d be impressive if it wasn’t so, well, hateful.
And if thread were about troupes in video games, you might have a point. But it isn’t, it’s about the hatred a woman received for daring discuss that. So you’re basically proving the point, though at least not being half as hateful as the gems in the OP.
@Argenti: Put me in the group of fucking shocked–I originally thought the term “ovendodger” meant refusing to cook, and never realized differently until several people here pointed it out.
I couldn’t even respond then because of the immense amount of……gobsmakedness?….about a term that without even being profane (i.e. would not get a text anything but a G rating) reeks with so much hatred.
And re our valiant champion of men above–and there’s also the fact that while the dumb dad stereotype exists (though probably NOT in a lot of games!), there are also a gazillion other character slots for straight white men–and the one thing all of them have in common is PROTAGONIST/HERO/MAIN CHARACTER.
That and the nearly complete absence of rape as a characterization device (have been wincing at all the discussion I’ve seen about the “more realistic” Lara Croft).
Also, lulz, of course the arson of cars was on public property…this is hilarious because Pitt acts like they own that bit of road, they have the authority to close it for example. It’d be considered on campus by anything but the technical definition.
And seriously, the rioting was scary bad, to not count that when reporting on how safe the school is just seems dishonest. I mean, NWO’s site is saying that you won’t get raped on campus, but we won’t bother telling you the risk in general. There’s some intellectual honesty for you huh?
Add “could be the rapes occurred off campus” to my previous list.
Lara Croft is supposed to be an archeologist right? Meaning she’d look more like this?
“I couldn’t even respond then because of the immense amount of……gobsmakedness?….about a term that without even being profane (i.e. would not get a text anything but a G rating) reeks with so much hatred. ”
As I said a few times when Bush was co-opting the phrase “I’m shocked and awed alright”
…oooh NWO!! Explain how that archeologist is dressed like an animal in heat?
Sorry, didn’t complete my comment above.
@Ithilania – I’m aware that the majority of these shows are written and produced by men. But discrimination doesn’t always come from strictly one specific group. For example, we know that women can support and uphold the patriarchy notion just as readily as men. Even within the black community, people tended to favor blacks of lighter skin and “good” hair. It’s still hate, no mater who’s doing the hating.
@Argenti – I wasn’t aware that the comments policy here was so strict on staying on topic.
@Idylle: You really are determined to support the menz no matter what.
If men want to work on deconstructing the kyriarchal constructions of masculinity (which btw some parts of feminism are connected to doing), then fine.
But don’t expect women to do all the heavy lifting.
You’re ignoring a large part of what Argenti, Darksidecat, and I have said.
Therefore, I am putting you in the TROLL spot. You can blather on about TEH MENZ all you like–but don’t expect to get anything but mockery.
@Argenti – how am I proving your point? This doesn’t have to be looked at in a zero-sum mentality; just because I mention that we could also shed a bit of spotlight at some of the tropes involving men doesn’t make the topic of Sarkeesian’s work any less admirable and important. Equality isn’t quantifiable, there’s enough to go around for everyone, as silly as this sounds.
Idylle, the point is that women can’t talk about women’s problems without men popping up to demand that they talk about men’s problems.
You are demanding that we talk about men’s problems.
Therefore, you are proving the point.
@Ithilania – I didn’t mean for it to come off that way. As provided by Futrelle, the men’s rights Reddit has already started discussing these roles, as well as those commenting on the Kotaru article (link provided by one of our commenters in the thread’s first page).
Just to be clear, I’m not defending ALL the menz. If the issue is worth looking into, like the dumb dad trope, I’ll defend. I am certainly not defending the men who hurled slurs at Ms Sarkeesian in a pathetic attempt at activism.
How can we not realize the problematic portrayals men face in media when it’s brought up every freaking time we try to discuss the problematic portrayals of women in media? Seriously, if some people could just shut up and listen for five minutes when women are talking, maybe we’d have enough time to deal with all the issues.
Idylle – Okay, I have to ask, are you not understanding how shifting the subject onto tropes about men in media in general in a comment thread about a woman who was viciously shamed and harassed by a pack of misogynists for attempting to address tropes about women in video games would a seriously unwelcome derail?
Because I would think it’s fairly self-explanatory. I don’t see why you wanna go down this road. I promise you it’s not going to be productive.
@katz – Ah. I realize now. *shuffles feet*
My bad. Guess my timing wasn’t so hot.
Really, Idyll?
http://www.alertlogic.com/assets/images/miscellaneous/missing_point.JPG