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!
@Discordia- I have a lot of DS games that I absolutely love. If you want, you can mention your favorite genres and I can make some recommendations if you would like! (I blog a lot on handheld games and play them a lot too, so yeah….I’m a big fan).
>>>I get told I’m not a real gamer because I play on a PC.
That’s funny because I know of plenty of people who would say real gamers ONLY play on PCs (because consoles are closed proprietary systems and all games made on both PC and console are ‘dumbed down’ for the console and also how dare they have decided not to release the Modern Warfare 2 server code so that anybody could run their own server just like every other previous CoD game, etc etc etc).
Argenti: “…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’m amused at the people (Ringo seems to be among this crowd, more than not; Shaennon, he takes that little riff with a very good humor), who think that ammo and the willingness to shoot people will be worth the effort to feed them.
Thanks, but no. I’d rather train someone to be a militia member, than add a mouth who is only really useful as a bully-boy. As Machiavelli said, the problem with mercenaries is they are prone to deciding to replace the paymaster.
But my skill set (as in things I am competent at) is frighteningly large. Chief among them is practice at teaching people to acquire skill sets. And I know how to read.
Pecunium — seriously! Someone who’s only got “screams really loud” going for them is more useful than the bully type. “And I know how to read.” — yeah that helps too 🙂
Adventure gamers represent!!! Curse of monkey Island is, bar one, my favorite game ever. I was actually just replaying Secret of Monkey Island a couple of months ago. Also awesome, Broken Sword 1&2.
AFLAC:
Do you even read the documents you’re citing? Right here:
I read the post after post after post of you saying that you weren’t allowed to have a gun, that all you were allowed to carry was a penknife. Right here:
And here:
Then when I called you on it, now you can’t possibly understand why we thought that you were saying you weren’t allowed to have a gun. Is this some bizarre, ham-handed attempt at gaslighting? I can’t really tell.
I had the document YOU LINKED TO, facts you yourself provided. Which detail a process slightly less invasive than the credit check I went through to get my apartment.
I’m a girl who’s been playing games since I was very young. I still have fond memories of a fighting game on the playstation where there was a male knight and a female knight and they had very similar armour except that the female had no pants. Just bare legs, and you could see her pink underwear. Why was she so much better than the male knight at protecting her legs that she didn’t need to wear leg armour like him, although she still wore heavy armour on the rest of her body? Probably FEMINISM, amirite guys? I hated her with a passion and she was the only character I’d never play.
Nowdays things are much better. I’ve played an awful lot of stuff, but these days I mostly like city-building. Like maybe Civ, it’s ok, or the Caesar or Anno serieses. Dwarf Fortress is awesome, although it does have interface issues, putting it lightly. I like turn based strat stuff, like the Heroes of Might and Magic series, or anything turn based squad-type, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy tactics, so on. I like RPGs like Dragon Age and Fallout but I can’t bother with the more sandbox ones like Skyrim. I like the Sims but I get embarrassed about that because it’s a girl game. I know, I know. I can’t help it, or at least I haven’t managed so far. I like Harvest Moon and Rune Factory too.
And I know never to tell people my gender online. One time someone guessed I was a girl because I use a lot of emoticons, haha. I like to think that I don’t use emoticons because I’m a girl, but who knows? I don’t have any female gamer friends I could have picked it up from. I just like ’em. Perhaps that is my essential girliness shining through?
I’m female and have been playing computer games since I was 4 (when my dad brought home a C64). When we were 11 my brother and I saved up for an Amiga 1200. I preferred adventure games, strategy games and rpgs, but I also used to love playing beat-em-ups (Street Fighter II 🙂 on the arcades (am probably betraying my age here!)
I LOVED (and still love) old adventure and role playing games. My favourite games ever are Ultima VII, Quest for Glory I-IV, King’s Quest series, Eye of the Beholder I & II, Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic II-IV, Civilization, etc.
I don’t really have time to play computer games anymore, but more recently I’ve enjoyed The Longest Journey (quite old now), Vampire: The Masquerade, the Mass Effect series, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I prefer games with a very well developed story-line.
Never got into online gaming. Tried Diablo online once and was immediately murdered by a PC I was meant to be co-operating with. Bah.
I’m going to reply to a bunch of random stuff because i’m Hardcore(tm) like that. It’s also going to be ridiculously huge, so prepare yourselves!
“Real gamers” of the PC variety also like to say that you aren’t a “real gamer” unless you build your own gaming PC, and criticise anyone who just buys one whole. Kind of sucks for someone like me; i’m not exactly knowledgeable about the inner workings of computers, and I don’t really care to learn. I mean, I know more than the average user and I can fix a lot of computer-related issues, but that usually involves a combination of Google searches and fiddling with it until it stops being broken. Building a computer from scratch, though, completely is beyond me.
“maybe Civ, it’s ok, or the Caesar or Anno serieses” – Alto
I remember playing a looot of Civ 2 when I was a kid. I also picked up Anno 2070 a few months back and i’d say it’s pretty much my favourite city builder. I’ve never played Caeser; out of that series-type-thing of games I did play Emperor though, which was pretty good.
“Dwarf Fortress is awesome, although it does have interface issues, putting it lightly” – Alto
Definitely. It’s an awesome and incredibly detailed game, but even just a mouse interface would improve it a lot. I doubt that would happen though because people would complain. Although on that note, have you heard of a game called Towns? For those who haven’t: it’s like Dwarf Fortress mixed with a bit of Settlers and Majesty (it takes inspiration for a bunch of places). It’s a lot less detailed than Dwarf Fortress, and it’s still a work in progress (it’s still in alpha I think, but you can buy and play it; it’s an alpha-funded game).
“One time someone guessed I was a girl because I use a lot of emoticons, haha.” – Alto
I tend to use a lot of them because you can’t tell how some means something from text, and I worry that something jokey might be taken as serious. I’ve never had someone think I was female because of it though. 😛
I have been mistaken for female though, one time when I used to play Neverwinter Nights 1. I played regularly on a server with a couple of female characters, and even the actual female players thought I was female in real life. I took that as a compliment on my roleplaying. 😀
On the whole PC vs consoles thing.
Yeah, that annoys me too. I grew up mostly playing on a PS2, but when I could afford it I migrated primary to PC gaming. I like to think this gave me the perspective not to be a giant arse about which is “better”. I still playing a bit of console every now and then, mostly with friends (split screen co-op on a console is pretty fun).
The only real way that PCs are objectively better is when it comes to graphics (and other technical points), purely because PCs evolve at a constant rate (and they don’t technically become obsolete if you’re someone who knows what to do, because you can upgrade them). Consoles, on the other hand, evolve in jumps so they tend to lag behind technologically between new versions. Everything else is just preference, or some types of game being more suited to certain control methods (like FPS games with a mouse rather than a controller, or fighting games with a controller rather than a keyboard).
“The handheld games aren’t suited to my sorts of dexterity/arthritis. Controllers just frustrate me. – pecunium
I can see how that would be a problem. I don’t have any actual problems like arthritis, but I do have this weird thing where I can lock the middle joints of my fingers (I used to amaze people as a kid when I showed people I could bend the end/tip joints of my fingers without bending the middle ones), which can be uncomfortable if i’m trying to play a game at the time and they lock unintentionally. I pretty much can’t hold anything with my fingers stretched out straight because it’s super uncomfortable (though not painful or anything, so it’s hardly a medical issue).
That’s all I have for now! 😀
Typos are the worst! I’m not even going to bother correcting things.. :O
The first game console I ever had was an NES that I won by taking first place in a safety poster contest at school.
My poster was about a kid catching fire by standing to close to a woodstove.
Nanasha–ohh awesome! I usually love RPGS, Puzzle games and Mysterys…also adventrue.
The new Monkey Island game was strange…they divided it up in 5 individual chapters that you had to wait a month for…it was annoying and fun at the same time!
Unfortunatly, I found the new Back to the Future games, really, really disappointing
Video games must be GREAT for boys and young men if feminists all hate them so! I think that they may be improved by explicitly, rather than accidently offering an alternative to the feminist-polluted legal, cultural, and media environment that characterises so much of life today.
Would John Norman consent to have his “Gor” novels set to videogames?
Meller, I’m pretty sure there are more than a few feminists that would be totally down with playing that game. Feminist and kink are two seperate things that sometimes overlap.
Wow. I honestly cannot think of any way to constructively engage with that comment.
Feminists are against MRAs running off cliffs, lemming-style. Just putting that out there.
(DKM’s comment, that is)
Melller, you do realize lots of feminists here including me like video games right? Games aren’t really overall feminist, if you actually did research then you would know this. Go back to playing with your dolls.
I’ve read that first sentence five times now and I still can’t work out if it’s sarcasm…
You haven’t read the comments, have you?
Yeah, if that first sentence isn’t sarcasm, allow me to revel in the irony that is posting:
Video games must be GREAT for boys and young men if feminists all hate them so!
In a topic filled with feminists telling each other which games they like.
I love that this comment follows directly after a long string of feminists discussing their favorite video games.
Aw, man, double-ninja’d!
Dwarf Fortress is great, but sandboxes just don’t hold my interest that well. I’m just like “OK, I built some stuff…now what?”
It also appeals to the crowd that thinks the mark of a “real” gamer is an obtuse interface.
“Would John Norman consent to have his “Gor” novels set to videogames?”
So I ran DKM’s reading of the Gor novels by a better read friend at one point, who laughed at how wrong he is and said I’d probably enjoy them. In other words, sign me up for test playing that game. Hell, as it is one of my favorite games is BloodRayne, because mocking the boob jiggle combined with decapitating nazis? Lots of fun!
ShadetheDruid — NWO doesn’t seem to read either the post or comments, DKM seems to only read the post, so he probably missed that he was winning ALL THE IRONY there.