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:
…we still weren’t talking about the tropes in video games themselves, but rather how the woman making the video got epic levels of shit for her kickstarter — it was a derail in other words. Had we been talking about the tropes, it’d have been pseudo-on-topic at least. The comparable mens’ issue here would be if they got shit (of remotely this level) for trying to raise money for something.
Had he brought up how Jewish (or Jewish “looking”) men get antisemitism, I doubt anyone would’ve disagreed or considered it a derail.
The male commenters around here, well some of them anyways, have a truly shitty habit of managing to make 4+ pages of comments into All About ME!!! btw, that is what we’re trying to prevent >.<
On one hand, I like sexy ladies, but on the other hand, vapid characters are boring. Unfortunately, male characters in games can be similarly boring, but the female characters generally seem to exist simply to be “eye candy” or die off so that the (male) main character can have some reason for why he’s doing the Big Manly Thing.
Just like the Bechtel test is used to point out problematic tropes and underlying misogyny in movies, I think that something similar can be applied to video games with abysmal results. Female characters generally don’t have a very good track record for being anything more than boobs, sex appeal and a collection of stereotypical female behaviors.
Of course, male characters are often stereotyped as well, but they’re often stereotyped as being able to DO things and GO Places and Save Worlds. Female characters basically bounce around and wear crowns and act helpless and shit. Or someone took Rambo and added boobs and somehow that’s supposed to make people feel better about the whole thing. The few female characters that escape most of these problems are so rare that people create tropes out of them (such as “Samus is a girl.”)
And it’s not just characters that are female- it’s the fact that female gamers in general (who often play as male characters) get treated particularly badly. There’s the nerd fantasy version of “female gamers” that falls very narrowly into a white, submissive, heterosexual nymphet sort of stereotype, and it’s incredibly insulting to the wide variety of actual female gamers out there. It also largely assumes that women play video games to get guys to pay attention to them, not because playing games is fun for womanly brains or anything.
As a gamer (and a gamer who is female and not just gaming to impress the menz), I find it really irritating to see that level of misogyny and outright hatred just because someone wants to write about an actual issue that is affecting a lot of female gamers (or keeping a lot of women from becoming gamers in the first place because game systems are given to brothers or they are told that it’s “not for you” or worse, bad non-sharing of game behaviors by brothers cause a girl to actively dislike gaming because of the negative feelings surrounding it). 99% of the games I play are either from Japan (which have their own misogynist problems but at least it’s not all fucking guns and chisel-jawed marines running around on dog-shit brown palettes) or they’re puzzle games so it’s kind of hard to mess those up (and even then….you’d be surprised).
And heaven forbid you’re a female gamer and you play anything that is not classified as “hardcore”- apparently playing “non approved by teh menz” games doesn’t make you a gamer and you’re not allowed in their club because of cooties or something.
Bottom line- I don’t play games to impress you, misogynist gamers- I play games because I like them. And if you’re the sort of person who thinks that stomping around like a petulant toddler and calling people bad names (the c-word doesn’t really seem to affect me for some reason), then perhaps the problem isn’t the person who was gaming to herself and enjoying said games, but a fundamental way of thinking that such misogynist asshatery seems to breed and foster as being “normal” and “ok.” Oh right, and bad behavior by said misogynists. You know, if you don’t have something nice to say, better not to say anything at all.
NWO —
Re: “Men being portrayed as inept buffoons has been turned into another example of womens oppression.” — um, that’s not what was said. Wtf was said was that the assumption is not that men are stupid, but that it’s demeaning for men to perform women’s work — that’s basically oppressing everyone.
Re: homelessness — irrelevant to the topic, no one but you said anything about homeless people. (Really, really, irrelevant to the topic of the shit she got for her kickstarter, which remains the damned thread topic)
You’re making even less sense than usual btw.
Oh, well fucking golly gee, YOU think this. We care, really. He’s a tiresome, derailing lackwit. Paraphrasing Chris Rock on white people, I ain’t got time to chop tiresome, derailing lackwits into little groups.
This isn’t entirely true, but if it were… who fucking cares? Men have the overwhelming majority of the internet for their shit.
No, not really. The most interesting discussion I’ve seen has never once touched on the few ways that dudes qua dudes get smacked around by kyriarchy, because not only are those ways not interesting, they are already discussed in the culture at large, and especially when privileged dudes whine about how that 30% in their paycheck is just SO HARD.
What is it with you WATMZ morons and an inability to read? Do you see the banner at the top of the site?
So you say, so you can’t demonstrate such a problem, so why should I care?
I agree. Sexy female characters are not the problem, but rather that every single female character must be sexy. Busty female characters are not the problem, but rather that more care and detail is spent on sculpting and animating the jiggle of her boobs than was spent on making her an interesting person. Unrealistic armor is fine, but I am annoyed that my female WoW characters put on plate mail bikinis while the same exact piece of equipment on a male character covers him completely.
While I’m on the topic of WoW, how about tier armor sets, you know, the ones that the artists spend extra special time on to make them match a theme and be iconic for the class that wears them and the dungeon they come from? Most of the chest pieces look completely wrong on a female model because of the way the texture stretches over the breasts. If we’re lucky, the artists “fix” this problem by cutting out much of the texture, creating a boob-window. If we’re particularly unlucky, the set also includes some hood or other design element that hangs down to the chest, clipping through the breasts on most female characters. This also isn’t helped by the fact that most female models don’t stand up straight like the male models do; their bodies are twisted slightly because, you know, women can’t just stand around without jutting their hips or arching their backs.
All this despite the fact that players using female models are hardly in the minority. It’s just that the male models are clearly what the designers design from, and then they alter things for female models. Every time WoW adds a new race, which model do they release first? The male model. Male is default.
The Tomb Raider reboot really is a perfect example. I’m far more annoyed by the inclusion of attempted rape in her backstory than I was by her big boobs and booty shorts. Lara Croft was a good character, didn’t care that she was also eye candy. The idea that attempted rape humanizes her and makes it easier for (assumed to be 100% male) gamers to empathize with her, though? That I have a problem with.
And then attempting to discuss that turns into yet another example of how much gamer dudes just don’t get it, as they keep offering the fact that the designers made her boobs smaller and gave her a pair of pants to wear as proof that the new version is improved and sexism free.
“So which particular reports are you most likely to believe?”
The ones with randomized sample sizes representative of the population in general — which is why I said those three studies had solid metholodogy, that’s what they did. You apparently question all research because it’s printed on paper though? Gods know I can’t help you if that’s the case.
“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?”
<10% according to every study that doesn't have a serious sampling bias issue, usually in the 4%-8% range. As in "4-8% of rape reports are false reports" — versus how 2/3 to 1/2 of rapes aren't reported.
"Parrot another lie and watch the hatred grow."
I don't think you could be more hate filled if you tried.
"There’s that 1 in 5 number again, you quoted the party line. Can you even comprehend thinking for yourself?"
Checking the metholodogy on multiple studies isn't good enough for you? Would you like me to calculate your height in metric in my head? Or since you assume I'm a woman I must just be wrong about everything? (It's that last one, let's just be honest)
Oh and I repeated this study as one of my very first research projects, tiny sample size, but I got about 1 in 6 — the expected results for the under 18 crowd I was working with. NWO please, keep insisting I know nothing about statistics when I have my damned degree in psych, which means research methods in practice.
There are multiple wild NWO sightings on the previous page guys, just so you know.
Milkboy doesn’t intersect with reality. I stopped caring about him a year ago.
I like games, and I would honestly like to play more, but I feel like my gaming experience is limited because I really don’t feel like dealing with shit. Part of me would really like to learn to get good at first person games or fighting games, but I know that as a woman, if I ever tried to play online, it would be horrifying. Especially as a woman who is not very good yet. I read those blogs about getting abuse on XBox Live, but most of the women who post those seem to have a side-note about how they beat some guy, or were better than some guy. What would it be like for someone who isn’t better?
Even when I tried to pick up new games with friends, no one ever seemed to be interested in helping me get better. I remember playing Tony Hawk with a group of guys years ago, and I mastered a move and I was super proud of myself, just to realize that absolutely nobody (including my BF at the time) gave a shit about what was going on on my side of the screen, because the person I was playing with was doing so much better.
I feel like if I want to be a girl in gaming, I have to be super-girl, or gtfo. I have to swing my dick as hard as the rest of the guys. And I don’t want to do that; I just want to have fun, and ideally have fun with other people.
So, I stick with single player games, or play games like WoW where I can segregate myself into playing with only people I know aren’t dickwads. And I leave all the public chat channels.
I’m playing a new game, it’s called “pretend NWO does not exist”. This is mostly for my own benefit, because really, why bother? It also has a fun potential side effect in that it may upset him given his I WON’T BE IGNORED tendencies.
This annoyed the shit out of me back when I played WoW regularly. My position was always “Okay, you want to make this robe display as a bikini and hot pants? Fine. But it better fucking look like a bikini and hot pants when a male character puts it on, too.”
I’d be all for ignoring NWO if I could say anything at all without him making demands of me.
“‘“Now to decide if Chapin can have my brain for 5 min.’
He’d need your enlightened brain to come up with the 1 in 5 college stat. Are you going to just parrot the stat or will you prove it?”
FFS NWO get lost, I explained that stat, with multiple separate studies with solid methodology backing them, and you said? “It’s on paper!” What’s next? “I bet it’s not in red ink?”
What’s purple ink mean btw? I’m trying to figure out which account this gov’n letter is using and it’s in purple. (To everyone not NWO, it really is in purple, wtf?!)
@Denise- My suggestion is to find what you like and play it. Also, if you’re looking to play with other people, you might consider getting a gaming group together of people you actually know who like to play games. Barring that, you can be very selective about who you play online with (my husband plays multiplayer but generally only plays with people he knows).
Of course, a lot of this is exhausting and stressful, but it’s also based on how much you want to put into it. Back in the day when it was just me and my big ol’ gray gameboy brick, I never had to worry about multiplayer and other bullshit like that. I’d play games with my guy friends and we’d take turns playing Pokemon Snap (I remember when I figured out how to take a picture of a Charizard- everyone went fucking nuts congratulating me- it was awesome) or Goldeneye (which I sucked at, but oh well), or even Tekken Tag Team.
Games themselves weren’t the only thing that made things fun, it was playing with people who were engaging with you and would let you take your turn and go “Oh man! You totally just did X!” or simply encourage you. And to some extent, online multiplayer basically took that and barfed all over it.
I also blog at a prominent gaming website and have made a lot of friends through my 3DS and XBOX360 that way as well- I find people with similar interests, create a group, and then add them as friends and play together.
And no, you don’t have to be “super girl” to play games- I’m just finally now playing through Master Quest for Ocarina of Time on the 3DS and I’m still carrying around all three fairies in bottles and getting all the power ups because that’s how I roll. For me, gaming is about what makes you feel like you’re having fun. And if you’re not having fun, you either have to change what you’re doing or reevaluate what you want out of what you’re doing.
It’s hard to know you’re not the best at things (or “better than some guy”) because our society bases worth firmly in relation to how well everyone else is doing and there’s a prevalent cultural trope that “doing better than X” is only outdone by “I made X do shittier than ME”, both of which are toxic to our society.
So yeah. Keep on rocking your game if that’s what makes you happy. And feel free to cut anyone out who wants to be a naysayer. It just breaks my heart that so many of my female friends gave up on gaming (or actively hate it) because they spent their entire young lives deferring the gaming to some guy (a brother, boyfriend, etc) and were relegated to watching them play games, or worse, be stuck playing a game they don’t like at the bequest of said guy and then being berated for an hour with a deluge of “backseat gaming” that basically amounts to you being insulted for not being awesome best at the game in like five minutes and then they wonder why you don’t want to play- which is where most gamer guys of that misogynistic ilk seem to think that women belong.
…And it’s not that NWO was a tiresome troll, although he certainly was tiresome, quite possibly the most tiresome troll on Manboobz, which would put him high in the running for most tiresome worldwide. It’s just that sometimes, there’s a troll, and well, he’s the troll for his time and place.
You can do whatever the hell you want, really. It’s your troll-arguing time. I’m just saying why I don’t, and I assume others have their own reasons for not using it there.
Rutee — yeah my point was that he seems to have a special bone to pick with my intelligence, which is the wrong tree to bark up, particularly when it comes to the math of research.
If he insists on bringing up rape statistics every time I say anything, can we please get rid of him already? Its very annoying, and disruptive, and not remotely lulzy.
So, your argument against me is that you think you also live in MRA bizarro world instead of reality?
NEVER IN ANY CULTURE IN ANY POINT IN HISTORY HAVE MEN DONE ALL OF THE WORK OR MORE WORK THAN WOMEN. The class of women that can actually afford to do no wage labor and shift all of the in house unrenumberate labor to other people (usually other WOMEN) are of the same class as men who don’t have to do any real work either. Fuck your bourgeois distortions of reality.
Also, CIVILIANS EXIST. Fuck, I keep having to make the same arguments over and over and over again because trolls never fucking learn. First, if you think soldiers are the group hurt most by war, fuck you. Second, men as a class benefit from militarism, and are given social benefits from it.
As to forced to sacrifice, women are culturally expected to sacrifice far more than men. In fact, a woman who refuses to do so is typically considered evil.
Forgive me while I go change my undies, cause I about peed myself laughing at how fucking absurd this statement is. Not all women are the most privileged of all classes, and men who are do not more productive labor and face no more risk. Poor women, colonized women, disabled women, women of color, etc. all exist.
This is just factually wrong, like everything else you’ve spouted. Women have always been expected to take up responsibilities, they just not have been given the rights and resources. These are two very fucking different things.
Men didn’t do everything in the history of ever, you sexist ass. Also, accusing the fucking people you expect to be total social support and to do most sustaining personal social labor of not contributing to the shit you do is fucked up and total bullshit.
I’m wondering what the fuck you think women have spent all of history doing. Labor, often disrespected and unrenumerated. People who hold others in slavery or servitude don’t get to say that because those people did not take part in society on the same terms as the master that they are not entitled to freedom and equality.
It’s pratfall comedy, being the pratfall machine is the star roll, not a fucking marginalization. Also, fuck your ignorant fool ass if you imagine that this is the only depiction or narrative around men or fathers on television. Not to mention that the wives of the buffoon are STILL FUCKING EXPECTED TO BE SUBSERVIENT AND CATER TO HIM.
No, the reason that it doesn’t sting is because it has nothing to do with the totally fictional social narratives you pulled out of your ass. Also, because men are centered culturally. There are a million depictions of men, men are everywhere in varied forms. Men’s stories are often the focus. Men write, direct, cast, produce, etc. It doesn’t sting men because it reinforces their social privileges, rather than dismantling them.
Reality, it’s a fucking thing, some of us live there.
Also, don’t say “no offense” to me before talking a lot of sexist bullshit. Sexist bullshit is offensive to me. Your qualification is worth less than nothing.
This is his pattern – he keeps picking a new person to fixate on and pester. Right now it’s you. He’ll get bored eventually if you ignore him, promise.
(Yes, “how to deal with NWO” is basically “how to deal with that boy who keeps pulling your hair in kindergarden, because he has the emotional maturity and logical skills of a 5 year old.)
Cassandra — I spent a lot of time in detention for my responses to that type…but point noted.
Hey, like Rutee said, if telling him off is fun for you, carry on. But you don’t have to if it’s not fun – it’s not like anyone believes a word he says.
It’d be more fun if he made an iota of sense, but when duty calls, well, it calls. And hey, maybe he’ll get mad enough to just start spewing insults, coaxing him into violating the comment policy would definitely be a net gain.
Anyways, who else is going to explain purple gov’n ink to me? PA:N(C)? He makes even less sense!
I’m getting a doctorate in history, and I’d also like to point out that before about 1700, women traveled with European armies in numbers about equal to the (mostly) male combatants. They walked along with them (carrying much heavier packs, according to the visual evidence, such as woodcuts, we have of them), they felt heat and cold too, and they got sick when the rest of the camp got sick (and disease was the biggest killer of armies up to the First World War–including the First World War, if you count the influenza outbreak of the time).
Since European armies of the time were underpaid, paid late, or not paid at all, they couldn’t have functioned without the activities of women, whether as foragers or as plunderers. I read a soldier’s memoir from the Thirty Years’ War where he describes his wife reaping and threshing grain outside a city they were besieging–she built an oven and they made a fair bit of money selling bread to the regiment. Some evidence suggests that camp women managed the money of the households they formed with their husbands/lovers/short-term boyfriends, and may have enjoyed more economic freedom than civilian women of the time.
And their lives were in danger as well. The author of the memoir married twice; his first wife died of illness on campaign, and his second wife was shot at while she was threshing grain. The mother of his second wife also died on campaign, and he buried her himself. This man had ten children with both of his wives: two survived the war. His memoir isn’t some kind of drums-and-trumpets noble narrative of war’s sacrifices, it’s this man counting dead children. Every time one of his children dies, he puts a number next to the name.
@VoIP: can you give a link or any other information so I could dig that account up to read? It sounds fascinating.
My personal favorite datum about women in historical military situations is how, during the siege of Constantinople during the fourth Crusade, the Crusaders decided to send away the “evil women,” i.e. the prostitutes, from the camp because (one of) the Bishop(s) with the army made the case that God was preventing their victory because of their immorality—the implication being that, the rest of the time, there wasn’t much of a problem with the righteous Christian forces retaining the prostitutes’ services. [/slightly OT history geeking]