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“Hatred and anger are power,” and other thoughts on women and gaming from Spearheaders

Evil incarnate

Over on The Spearhead, W.F. Price celebrates the harassment directed at Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes Against Women video project as a sign of a powerful new backlash against the evils of feminism, a backlash he’s proud to be a part of. Dudes being obnoxious to a woman on the internet: Men’s Rights at its finest.

Oh, sure, Price acknowledges, some of the attacks on her were “juvenile” – and thus not as effective as they might otherwise have been — and the controversy did enable Sarkeesian to raise more than $130,000 for her project, but Price even sees this as a victory of sorts:

As for Sarkeesian’s success, we should be happy about it, because I can’t think of a more worthless way to spend over a hundred thousand dollars than in finger-wagging over video games. For one thing, it’s sure to piss even more guys off, and the game industry is very competitive, so her documentary (now expanded to 12 parts!) will likely have zero effect on production and consumption of this form of entertainment. The feminists are simply pissing all the money away, and that’s fine, because this time they’re paying for it themselves.

No question about it: those grapes were definitely sour.

Naturally, the Spearhead regulars were overjoyed by these new signs of, er, progress. Here are some highlights from the discussion that followed; lest I be accused once again of cherry-picking outliers, each and every one of the comments I quote below got literally dozens of net upvotes. This is what these guys really think.

Mojo offers a sort of backlash manifesto:

Feminists will never understand that it is -they- who are the oppressors. They cling to their delusion that they are the ‘underdog’ against the system, even as they control the system.

Revolution requires an enemy class to attack … this is seen as justified when the enemy class controls the system. But feminism is perpetual revolution. So what happens when they gain control over the system? They continue to attack the enemy class, i.e. men, thinking they are striking the next blow against the patriarchy, when what they are doing is more like a pogrom.

Yep, he went there.

Now -they- are the system, they are able and more than willing to intimidate, humiliate, expropriate. It will get indefinitely worse if they have their way. Liberal feminism leads -necessarily- to radical feminism.

Still, we don’t need feminists to ‘understand’ that they are the persecutors (I imagine some of them know this full well and are just misandrist sadists, little Eichmanns). It doesn’t matter what they think or know or understand. What matters is what -we- think, know and understand, and how we are going to act on it.

So … like the swivel-eyed feminist lunatics progressing from attempted assassinations to laying the foundations for institutional and legal abuse … I ask you – what are we going to DO with this knowledge and awareness beyond changing online discourse? …

Thinking like a leftist, though: why not attach ourselves to the GOP in order to subvert its gender politics and radicalize it in the MRA direction? That kind of approach has worked wonders for leftists and their infiltrations into public institutions …

Huh. Reactionary anti-feminists attaching themselves to the Republican Party? No one’s ever thought of that before.

Keyster offers some equally, er, innovative thinking:

Feminism has failed because women as a group adopted the notion of “equality” with men, while stubbornly clinging to their sexual/reproductive power over men. Had feminism truly helped women “realize their greatness”, there’d be far more great women. Instead there’s just more feminists. It’s run it’s course over 3 generations and it’s out of time to prove itself righteous.

The original “male chauvanist pigs” of the early 70′s, were right all along. Women are biologically and chemically ill-equipped to be men. If the Creator had meant women to be more like men, he wouldn’t have given them the ability to bring forth life from their bodies.

Ryu not only embraces the backlash, but seems perfectly fine with the notion that the Men’s Rights movement is a hate movement:

Good. Hatred and anger are power. Whenever you hear someone say “stop the hate”, it is a call to throw down your greatest weapons.

Young Guy purports to speak for all young guys (manginas presumably excepted):

If feminists think men, especially young men, are angry, they don’t know the half of it. As a 26 year-old male, I have seen this society bend over backwards to accommodate women all the time.

The school curriculums are geared toward female success. Schools have countless women’s programs. Female teachers can be as hateful as they want towards male students without facing consequences. People cheer when girls succeed in school, but jeer when boys succeed in school. Even though females have every advantage in the education system, they somehow still have the audacity to complain. They take fluff majors but don’t realize anyone with less than half a brain could pass classes in the humanities and social sciences.

What makes so many MRAs such proud yahoos?.

Oh, and just look at the workplace. Sexual harassment laws give women freedom to dress slutty and still have the nerve to complain when men sneak a peek. If you are a man who has a female co-worker, you have to walk on eggshells everyday or else you can get fired because the twat in the other room got her panties in a bunch over something minor you said. You can be a man who has busted his ass everyday to succeed in your chosen profession, only to see it mean nothing because some woman who was nothing more than an affirmative action hire. If this isn’t bad enough, you get these useless women who are subpar, yet they still never shut up about breaking through the mythical glass-ceiling that they didn’t break and didn’t exist in the first place.

Working men, forever cursed by subpar women.

Also, I have really had enough of women dragging this country down with their dead-weight. Female soldiers, police officers, and firefighters are liabilities. No, all you ladies in these jobs, you aren’t heroes. I am going to go insane if I hear one more female soldier, police officer, or firefighter cry about not getting the respect she thinks she deserves. She doesn’t get respect because she doesn’t deserve respect. The military, law enforcement, and firefighters would be A LOT better off if women stopped lowering the bar to astronomical proportions.

“Lowering the bar to astronomical proportions?” Young Guy here has clearly not yet mastered the fine art of metaphor.

He blabs on a bit longer before wrapping up with:

The backlash is not only real, but it is well-deserved. Apologies won’t erase the damage which has been done. Acting like what happened because of feminism either didn’t happen or was minor is a slap in the face. Saying women have suffered from feminism just as much as men is like spitting in the faces of all the men who have suffered ten lifetimes of pain because of feminism.

Not one, not two, not five, but ten lifetimes of pain? MRAs really are the world’s greatest drama kings.

Andrew S., meanwhile, seems a little confused as to what feminists would like to see happening in the video game industry:

It will be interesting to see if feminists can ruin the gaming industry like they ruin pretty much everything else. There is a lot of money being made off “gamers,” and even guys like me who play the occasional game but aren’t hardcore contribute a lot of money to the industry.

I doubt there are a lot of young guys and men out there who are going to want to play games that involve a bunch of screaming feminists, and where the object of the game is to destroy the “evil patriarchy.” The truth is guys who play games want their female characters to be either hot, large breasted, ass kicking types, or sexy non-feminist types that you save. If the gaming industry changes this dynamic to much due to Feminist/liberal pressure they will destroy a cash cow. And feminism will have yet another “victory.”

 

Unrestricted and uncriticized access to giant tittied video game ladies: a sacred men’s right!

Kevin evidently speaks for many when he says he wants video games to remain a boys club:

Video games are pretty much the only place that feminism can’t invade unless the principle consumers of them want it. You don’t have to play with girls, or listen to girls, or do other pansy shit. You probably can’t leave a football team and join a different one that has no women, you sure as hell can do that online. Don’t like all the teamwork talk? Play by yourself.

Feminists don’t like video games because; they can’t make them, they can’t force you to buy them or play them even if they did, they couldn’t ruin the experience for you unless you wanted them to.

You can do anything feminists don’t want you to do, and best of all you’re rewarded for it.

Anonymous Age 70 doesn’t even play video games, but he was pleased to learn that you can shoot ladies in them:

Speaking of video games, I am reminded of my son 8 or 10 years ago. I visited him, and he had some kind of shoot-em-up video game. He was partnered with a dearie, and the instant the game started, he always put a bullet in the middle of her forehead. Then, he’d laugh as if it were the funniest thing ever.

I told him he was a sick man, but I was also laughing as if it were the funniest thing ever.

Seriously, he told me he performed better with her dead than needing to be protected.

A great analogy for marriage 2.0, yes?

Women, can’t live them, can’t shoot them in the head. Except in video games!

Criticizing video games is misandry!

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ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

I’m pretty sure the main anti-Final Fantasy “thing” that comes from the “hardcore gamers” is that a lot of the male characters are androgynous (and therefore bad, because obviously they’re girly/evil).

Myoo
Myoo
12 years ago

Going back on the gaming subject…What does everyone think of Adventure Games…Anyone play old school games like Heroes Quest, Kings Quest, and the like? or the modern ones like The longest Journey, and Monkey Island?

I’ve played a bunch of old adventure games, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Simon the Sorcerer 2, Full Throttle, Flight of The Amazon Queen, Teen Agent, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Freelance Police, Legend of Kyrandia, Beneath a Steel Sky, etc.

More recently, I’ve also played a bunch of freeware adventure games which are quite good, like the Ben Jordan series, the Chzo Mythos series by Yahtzee, A Tale of Two Kingdoms, Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy, Ben There, Dan That, and a bunch of others I can’t recall right now. I mostly get them at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx
It has a bunch of good, free adventure games made with Adventure Game Studio, a freeware program for making adventure games.

katz
12 years ago

Old adventure games are fun; I think Beneath a Steel Sky is a great game by any measure.

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

I’m pretty sure the main anti-Final Fantasy “thing” that comes from the “hardcore gamers” is that a lot of the male characters are androgynous (and therefore bad, because obviously they’re girly/evil).

Some of the same hardcore gamers&#8482 also make fun of Final Fantasy for having frequent, long cut scenes. It’s funny because FPS games like Halo and Resident Evil also have elaborate cut scenes. Maybe the difference is what Cliff described is that the scenery in the cut scenes are pretty and colorful, rather than gray and drab?

I also like the Sims, btw. I guess it’s “not real” because it allows people to have friendly interactions and decorate a home? Then again, you can also have meteors and ghosts torment your Sims, if you’re in an evil deity sort of mood.

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

Oops, I messed up my trademark symbol HTML.

Myoo
Myoo
12 years ago

Old adventure games are fun; I think Beneath a Steel Sky is a great game by any measure.

It’s also been released as freeware for ScummVM, along with Flight of the Amazon Queen and Lure of the Temptress.ScummVM being a program that lets you play older adventure games on modern computers.

katz
12 years ago

Yes, that’s how I played them (except the ones I played on Ubuntu). I was a wee child when they originally came out.

ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

Oh “hardcore gamers” love to gripe about games being “grey and drab” themselves, even when they aren’t (because they don’t bother to look before complaining most of the time). A good example of that was back when Bulletstorm came out (if you’ve never heard of it, it’s an FPS that’s a silly take on typical FPS tropes, like manly masculine mans, with the aim of not taking itself too seriously.. and it’s set in some sort of tropical region, so grey and drab it’s not).

Halo is far from grey and drab either (although i’ve only played the first two, seeing as they don’t like being nice and releasing them on PC D:).

But you’re right about the cutscene length thing, they do like to complain that the Final Fantasy games are “more like movies than games”.

themisanthropicmuse
12 years ago

My grandparents bought me a Magnavox Odyssey 2 when I was around five or so. I really liked it but when I got an Atari I became addicted to dig dug. After that, the original Nintendo got me hooked on beating old school RPGs (like the Dragon Warrior series). I also had lots of love for Mario and Link.

I’ve owned a Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Gamecube, Playstation, Nintendo 64, Playstation 2, Xbox, Wii and Xbox 360 and have played more fun games than I could probably ever recall. Oh, and I love my MMOs too and before those existed I was busy playing text based MUDs and learning how to program them. So, anyone who wishes to suggest I’m not a gamer just because I have tits can bite me.

Now that I’ve said what had to be said, I think I’m going to get back to replaying Fallout 3 as an unarmed, cannibalistic Ninja.

pecunium
pecunium
12 years ago

katzentier: A Schlemmertop is a type of clay pot. It is terra-cotta, and so porous. It’s only glazed on the inside of the bottom section, so the juice doesn’t infiltrate the clay/bake away.

You soak the top:top/bottom for 10 minutes, at least, before putting it into a cold oven, and turning on the heat.

The water in the clay keeps the food moist, and the close dimensions makes it very efficient. Once the water is gone it crisps the top of the food. None of the released liquids are lost.

pecunium
pecunium
12 years ago

I get told I’m not a real gamer because I play on a PC. The handheld games aren’t suited to my sorts of dexterity/arthritis. Controllers just frustrate me. Some Wii games are ok, but they are things like golf. I tried to play Close Combat on the Wii and it just annoyed me.

Discorda
Discorda
12 years ago

Lego Star Wars and Lego Harry Potter are awesome! That is all.

Tatna
Tatna
12 years ago
Reply to  Discorda

I think the hardcore gamer wars and the platform wars are kind of like the Ford vs Holden debate.

a) Hardcore games are the ones you’re into and all the others are not.
b) The best platform is the one you like.

Therefore I proclaim the most hardcore game ever to be Horsez on PC.

Tatna
Tatna
12 years ago

(which, I should add, my kid bought me for my birthday because he knows i like horses. it turned out to be both harder and more absorbing than I expected, and one of the few games that actually gets horse movement graphics close to right)

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
12 years ago

Kyrie — “I don’t know if “make yourself visible by wearing silly hats” fit in the “at best” or “at worst” category.” — depends on the hat, and the wearer? Silly person + silly hat + costume party can = hilarity. (I have a teeny tiny top hat I’m particularly fond of and will take any excuse to wear, so I might be biased here)

Pecunium — re: zombies — should they ever happen, you and my brother are both on my short list. He enjoys digging holes for no apparent reason, like, “dig up a patch for carrots” became a 5’+ deep hole, thing was deep enough I needed help getting out of it. I have foraging skills for sure (mmm wild blueberries, delicious), and rarely practiced escape skills — I am much better at the doctor who “run away!!” And the FWB, he’s both a martial artist and has gone to burning man — anyone who voluntarily spends a week in the desert is the right kind of nuts for zombies. (He also does lighting design, so spotlights a plenty = check!)

BlackBloc — re: aboriginals — thank you for that Canadian answer, I was assuming it was similar to the US but not sure.

Re: games — I got really horribly suck really early in one of the King’s Quest games and gave up. The atari game adventure might be my favorite game EVAR though (I have a thing for slaying pixel dragons in mazes I guess?). Favorite modern game is as “laughable” as the Sims — Kingdom Hearts (it has a square soft learning curve, don’t be fooled by the disney) That or Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, but that requires me to have a working copy of windows, which I usually don’t (beaten that twice and still have 4 endings left, kind of excellent).

katz
12 years ago

I get told I’m not a real gamer because I play on a PC.

Real gamers spend hundreds of dollars on a computer that can’t be used for anything except playing video games, is incompatible with games made for any other system, and will be obsolete in a few years.

Nanasha
Nanasha
12 years ago

The whole “real gamer” debate always strikes me as being similar to the whole “real woman” thing. As far as I’m concerned, if you identify as female, you’re female. If you identify as a gamer, you’re a gamer. It’s really not that hard.

RE: Adventure Games- I actually love adventure games for handhelds (DS especially). There are a good number of games that are awesome on the DS and the best part is that you can pick them up for pretty cheap:

*Trace Memory
*Hotel Dusk
*9 Doors 9 Persons 9 Hours
*Disgaea Infinite
*Dream Chronicles
*Myst (DS) <- to be fair, I'm not a big fan of the series, but it is point-and-click so I included it.

Oh, and then there's my favorite point and click adventure that was for PC- The Neverhood:

Oh Klayman, you slay me! XD

Nanasha
Nanasha
12 years ago

PS: Sorry, my mistake- Disgaea Infinite is for PSP. =_=;;

Discorda
Discorda
12 years ago

yeah..it really is kind of silly, I mean games are for fun right?

I’ll have to check those out Nanasha–I am starting to get a little tired of Mario and Donkey Kong games

pecunium
pecunium
12 years ago

I’m always amused at the “end civilisation as we know it” crowd.

Not just the idiots, but the people who have made some, in theory, systematic study of it.

I was on a panel with Johnny Ringo about “Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse” and he was dismissive of my comment (in response to someone who said a lot of things were, “lost arts” ), “You haven’t seen my bookshelf.

I had to tell him I’d lived off of food I’d grown, etc., before he gave me even a soup&ccedilla;on of respect on the subject.

The thing is, people are really good at working together. Say what you like about Niven and Pournelle’s politics (Larry is far more sensible than Jerry, but I digress), but in Footfall they hit that on the head. People got to working with each other to try and pull through as soon as the dust started to settle.

Which is what will happen. Yeah, I’m not the best smith, and I don’t have a forge, but I have the texts to make the learning possible. If I can survive the transition event me (and those who I am with) will get by.

Or die trying.

QuantumSparkle
QuantumSparkle
12 years ago

Monkey Island is so much fun! I love the humor in that game. Like how the game is silly enough to have instant saltine crackers (just add water) and a remarkably useful rubber chicken.

Discorda
Discorda
12 years ago

hehe yep! My favorite was the 3rd one probably…I love3d the pirate barbers quartet!

Discorda
Discorda
12 years ago

hehe yep! My favorite was the 3rd one probably…I loved the pirate barbers quartet!

Shaenon
12 years ago

Oh John Ringo no.

Had to say it.

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
12 years ago

“…but I have the texts to make the learning possible.” — I’m always amused by the people who think they just need lots of ammo and the internet, like the latter would last very long or something.

I sort of know basic field medicine and can sew by hand, well. I hope never to have to combined those though. Of course, should the species survive the transition, sewing skills won’t be a random neat skill anymore…and I can do buttonholes by hand, argh is that annoying though.

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