So the top post in the Men’s Rights subreddit for a time yesterday, with hundreds of upvotes, was a post devoted to the question: “Why should male gamers change their behavior?” Yep, apparently the sacred right of men and boys to harass women and girls on Xbox live is one of the most important Men’s Rights issues of the day. Here’s how the OP, IsItRacistToAsk, framed the issue:
[G]amers themselves (until relatively recently) were a 90% male community. This goes back really far if you count non-video-game games (like Dungeons and Dragons and the like). Now all of a sudden they’re expected to just behave differently because some girls want to join?
I’m not saying girls shouldn’t be welcome in gaming communities, I’m just comparing them to someone who shows up, uninvited, to a house party and demands everyone go out and get blue plastic cups because red offends her.
Well, no, it’s more like a girl or a woman going to a public event, open to everyone, and facing a small army of creepy dudes who come up to her making sandwich jokes and calling her a bitch and a whore and a fat slut and demanding that she show her tits and when she refuses telling her “I hope your vibrator shorts out and fries your fucking vagina.”
The OP’s response to harassment? Well, guy gamers regularly get called “faggot” and “n*gger,” so girls and women should just suck it up.
Yeah, it would be too much to ask to suggest that guy gamers actually stop calling each other racist and homophobic slurs as well. Because, really, how can you possibly enjoy Call of Duty without calling some guy who’s just shot you a “fag.” Seriously, gals, you need to model yourselves on the mostly straight white dudes of Reddit who really don’t mind when people call them “n*ggers” and “fags.”
The discussion (more than 700 comments worth at the moment) is about as terrible as you might expect, filled with epic shitlordery and self-congratulation and calls for the gals to “man the fuck up,” with only a handful of commenters having anything bad to say about the culture of harassment in online gaming. Indeed, most of the gamers in the conversation seem to feel proud that online gaming culture is as shitty as it is.
Some highlights:
JonLR won himself more than a hundred upvotes for this self-congratulatory assholery:
By asking to never be made fun of, they’re essentially asking for special treatment. These days, ‘gamer girls’ go on and on about wanting to be treated like everyone else, but then cry when they are?
I used to play Quake 1 online, and a lot of the players knew I was short (5’7″). I got called a fucking midget every game, haha. My asian clanmate got called a chink every game. Fat people got called fat, girl players got called sluts, everyone made fun of everyone. No one cared. It was all aimed at throwing people off their game.
What the fuck happened in the past 15 years that made it the worst thing imaginable to insult a girl in gaming? Whatever it was, it’s embarrassing to witness.
Oneiorosgrip got nearly two hundred upvotes for her special snowflaking:
I’m not a video gamer – long time tabletop gamer though…
Remembering when I was the only girl in the group, it strikes me that modern gamer girls are spoiled princesses who expect to walk a path they did not forge, without ever seeing any of the dirt along the side. Those of use who played before there was internet, before there was linking between video game systems… before there were RPGs on video game systems, for that matter… we didn’t earn our place among the gaming community by whining about shit like that. You had to be able to take it, and dish back, or you took your dice and went home.
I took my dice and went home only once, and found that to be a wholly unsatisfying response. After that, I learned to eschew restraint and mouth off in kind. That was more effective, and more fun, and I think it would be the more appropriate handling of today’s gaming environment, as well.
In other words, IMO, modern girl gamers really just need to man the fuck up.
Men’s Rights subreddit regular Demonspawn was his normal charming self:
Men take the shit to make a niche, once it’s successful women want to take it over.
This is the world order, nothing new about it. I’m just glad that gamers are finally saying “No.”
Sidetracking got dozens of upvotes for suggesting that women and girls just hide their identity and pretend to be guys, because gamer girls who acknowledge their gender online are just attention whores hungry for female privilege anyway:
When anybody plays a video game, without talking, they are pretty much concealed. Nobody really knows what gender, age, etc. In real life, girls expect this privileged talking, because people want to engage in intercourse with them, however, over a video game, this privilege is gone. In order to get the privilege back they say “Hey, I’m a girl”, not knowing that this privilege is completely removed over the internet. Then they get over-sensitized when someone calls them a bad name, when they don’t realize that pretty much everyone calls anyone out over the internet.
Daysleepin83 also got dozens of upvotes for talking about the kinds of “gamer girls” he hates the most: The ones who complain and the ones who, evidently,wear no clothes.
For the most part i really don’t give two shits about what sex my opponent is.
But there are two types of “gamer girls” that really piss me off. There are those like Anita Sarkeesian who seem to bitch and nag about all that is sexist and wrong with video games. Doesn’t really offer any solution to the problems she digs up, aside from telling us we need to change. …
Then there is the second group, they don’t so much as piss me off but more like aggravate me. The sexy gamer girl. … Could she be a legitimate gamer? Sure of course she could be. I could also one day become the Pope. Till she puts some clothing on and picks up that controller i am not going to take her serious as a gamer.
MrDorph explained that he hates those “girl gamers” who “have to shove down your throat.” (Shove what? Your own assholery?)
The issue I have is girl gamers who have to shove down your throat. I imagine the majority just don’t give a shit and tend not to talk or if they do its not provocative. The moment I hear “hey guys” I leave, I can’t be bothered with the shit storm that comes with it.
Ghebert001 told the “poor things” to get used to shitty treatment, in online gaming and everywhere else:
Bottom line is women need to learn to adapt to the “environment” (environment meaning gaming community, workplace, etc.) instead of always expecting that the “environment” adapt to them and use language like “it makes me uncomfortable” to shame others in that “environment” to accommodate them at their own expense.
Throwing in the obligatory, “women” =/= all women…don’t want to offend the poor things. Oh wait, there I go accommodating again!
Yourotherusername wins points for pomposity with this response to the OP:
Well put. Like many things, the environment of gaming has it’s own language. It isn’t the language of Shakespeare or high-finance. It’s high context communication. It’s code. It isn’t (usually) to be take at face value. The problem for the people who complain, is that the marketers who attracted them to play the game, didn’t tell them how the game is played and the vocabulary needed.
If a person hangs out with a group of people not in their normal click, they need to understand that what is being said, might not actually be what was meant, and until they grasp the context, they need to keep their mouth shut if they don’t want to look like an asshole. I’d much rather ‘learn the language’ than try to change a sub-culture.
Take reddit for example. Expect masturbation jokes. Expect memes. Expect stereotypes. But in all of that, you will find that once you adapt and understand the context, it becomes more than a middle school locker room (especially in the smaller subreddits). IF you are so bold as to challenge the nature of communication on Reddit by admonishing others and trying to get them to change their way, you will be anathema, and most likely down voted to hell. The best you can do to change the language, is to be an example of what you want, and hope to flying spaghetti monster, that it catches on.
TLDR: Go with the flow or don’t go at all.
Reddit: Awful and proud of it.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Men’s Rights subreddit, someone has once again posted a link to the “The Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics,” because god forbid anyone ever say anything “shaming” about MRAs for being the shitty people they are.
Phil… I see you’ve dropped your arguments in the Patriactionary thread. We’ll just take that as admission you are wrong.
I’m just a misanthrope
A “misanthrope” who thinks angry little dudes need to be protected, and coddled, while the nasty girls who want to ruin their fun are kept in their places (and no, I’m not just talking about gaming… you’ve made other comments; even though you seem to be ignoring the responses they got)
Now to business:
We agree, aren’t you happy? It’s also good that no one is asking for gaming to vilify male sexuality. What we are talking about (and you agreed with) is vilifying the behavior of some males.
Anyway, I can’t respond to all of the points, and it’s not like you guys like what I say anyway so I’ll try to keep this brief.
If you can’t take the heat, I understand, but really… whining again that you can’t keep up with the comments, when it’s been more than a day since you made them? It’s not really all that much; and some of it is people making related points. If you cared, you’d do it.
To copy you guys: Citation needed. How do you know that just because there are less women that this involves sexism
If only you knew how that trick works. We know it because we have (and have referenced) people talking about just that. We have your reaction that Anita Sarkeesian is facing sexist backlash just for wanting to talk about it (e.g. you, with the idiocy of telling us how awful her conclusions will be before she has made them). The entire “tech” industry is full of it, and gaming just happens to be a visible part of it. But the women who speak at Open Source Events. These women are talking about it right here. We have the personal testimony of the men and women here who have seen/experienced it. Citations fucking made
Also, how do you know that females don’t make up half of the characters? They may not in CoD but that forgets RPGs, or games like Harvest Moon and so on where there are a lot of female characters. [which could use some support]
Ah yes… the ghetto of, “lady games; a variation on, “get back in the kitchen, where you belong.” What you are saying is that since there are some games, which you have decided are for ladies, there’s no problem that some men are such foul, obnoxious, hateful, and terrible that women (and some men) can’t abide their company, and that’s just fine with with you. Boys will be boys and all; there’s nothing we can do.
Maybe there would also be more female characters if women came into the industry and actually created content instead of just trying to get people to change it from the outside. I’m not aware of a single barrier to women entering the field
That’s because you don’t read. That or you have confirmation bias. Go look at that Gizmodo piece I linked.
and while you insist sexism is keeping women out I’m also sure you won’t be able to find a systemic instance of women being excluded.
And I’m sure you will ignore the evidence you are presented.
At any rate, why can’t it just be possible that there are less female developers because women generally don’t like to write computer code?
Citation Needed. I know Skud; she’s a shit hot coder. I know who is in the DevTeam at Dreamwidth, female coding all over the place. I know coders at Google, female coders. It’s not that women don’t like to write code, it’s that GameDev Cultures (as discussed) is hostile to them. At least as hostile as the wider world of tech (again see the Gizmodo piece I wrote, or go look at the comments to Sarkeesian).
Maybe because revealing your gender tells everyone that you think you’re special because of your gender. You’re not “hiding” your gender if you don’t reveal it, you’re just not focusing on it because who cares?
Maybe forcing people to pretend to be a gender they aren’t is sexist? Maybe people would like to be appreciated for themselves, not presumed to be a man. Maybe the problem isn’t that, “women want to be seen as something special”, but that a lot of dudes get furious when they find out they aren’t.
And then they attack the people who made it plain.
How is having the strictly regimented overbearing control in video games that we have in the military appealing? Sounds worse than women (and men) being made uncomfortable.
Could you please put this into English: because I honestly can’t make any sense out of it.
I served in the Air Force, which is noticeably less masculine, but that’s still how I base my experience of men “testing” others and being dbags or aholes as you put it. That’s even with the rules and restraints.
I spent a lot of time working with the Air Force… it may be, “less masculine”, but I found the men in it to be a lot more sexist than the men in the Army. I could speculate and say that it’s because it’s a more “tech” environment, and then refer to all the things we are talking about now.
So if that’s your baseline… I see why your baseline is fucked up.
No, the reason it’s difficult is you are doing just that, and trying to say you aren’t. We aren’t letting you pull that shit, and it’s making your position pretty plain. Let me show you:
See… you are telling women to “just deal” with assault. You weasel word it with, “excessive”, so that you can take any single instance and say it wasn’t; thus papering over the sheer ubiquity of the abuse.
Even if we accept the premise (that the majority of male gamers would like women to accept them being massive shitbirds) the majority of male gamers is still a minority of the market/comfort. Why should they get to drive the bus? Just for being the biggest assholes?
And that’s a bullshit answer. It begs the question. Gaming culture is not a Platonic Ideal. It’s a culture. It’s a created thing. It can be changed. A majority of southern whites in the ’50s seemed to want the “coloreds” to just, “adapt to the culture like they and everyone else had to, instead of complaining and trying to change it to suit their comfort level.”
But those people were wrong.
Okay, let’s all do that. So long as it doesn’t go too far and turn gaming into yet another PC culture where people are afraid to express themselves because we’re concerned only with making sure everyone’s comfortable.
Dude…. I am not concerned with making everyone comfortable. I just don’t want the efforts to make all women uncomfortable to
continue.
And your, “solution” is to do nothing, and complain that those who are trying to do something are just ruining it for everyone. Your “solution” is to ignore everything in the statement I wrote:
<blockquote:It’s eradicable. It takes will, and social pressure, and sometimes the hammer of retribution.
Which you are fine with, so long as there is nothing of social pressure, nor the hammer of retribution; because they make the boys who hate girls unhappy, and that’s just “Political Correctness” run amok.
After all, your “solution” is to say, “the assholes are a minority” and the women who say they are harassed so badly they can’t enjoy the games ought to just suck it up. Abuse is cool with you, so long as the boys don’t have to face that they are abusing people. God Forbid! anyone should call them out for being dickheads.
You, when the chips are down, are on the side of the dickheads.
FUCK what an ugly place to miss a link close tag.
Though it does, in it’s present incarnation, have a certain subtle charm, given the actual link.
Dave, if you could fix that one, I’d appreciate it, since I have some secondary emphases which are a little hard to see.
If not, it still has that certain charm.
I don’t think I could respond to this any better than the way Tulgey Logger has already responded.
Gee, the majority of male gamers had to adapt to a culture (and just imagine what an absolute ordeal this must have been!) where:
a) full body armour on a male character suddenly morphs into a thong bikini when donned by a female character because, y’know, we’re goin’ for realism here
b) male gamers rib/insult/vent at other male gamers by comparing them to or insinuating that they are female or feminine, therefore inferior and less capable if not downright useless
c) male gamers respond to identifying-as-female gamers (especially when losing out to them) by calling them bitches or cunts who need to suck their dick then make them a sammich or gtfo
d) etc., etc.
But, for heaven’s sake, DON’T try to adapt to the culture by, in turn, villifying males or male sexuality because that would just be wrong!!!
OMFG!! ROTFLMAO!!! That is just priceless!
“Of course, talking about this is difficult since saying this [“this” being that women just need to suck it up and deal with the excessive verbal assaults…erm, I mean, adapt to the culture of hurling excessive verbal assaults on women because they are women] will make it seem like I’m just telling women to deal with excessive verbal assaults.”
@Falconer
Persona Games, women!
Persona 2: Innocent Sin: 3 out of 6 main characters, one of the women gets swapped out for a man half-way through
Persona 3: 4 out of 8 (one is a robot, but identifies as female), 5 in the ‘Femtagonist’ route in P3P
Persona 4: 3 out of 8, plus Naoto who has gender identity issues and I haven’t finished their social link yet. They may count, being female-assigned-at-birth (I think that’s the term?).
And speaking of adapting, I was just recalling the days back when my 2nd husband and I used to play board games that would now, I guess, be called ‘of the PvP variety’. If he won the game, he would crow about it, thumping his chest (metaphorically speaking) for an hour or so…. but if I won the game….well…. the hissy fit and the sulking and pouting would last the entire rest of the day/night, and often continued on into the next day. It got to the point where I “adapted” by letting him win each and every time, no matter the game, because it was just easier for me to deal with the hour or two of crowing and chest beating than it was to deal with the day or two of sulking and pouting once the hissy fit had subsided.
Now, is that how female video gamers have to “adapt” to the online gaming culture, by “dumbing themselves down” and allowing male gamers to better them all the time so that their poor widdow feewings don’t get hurt? Would that make for a decrease in their misogynistic bullshit, by “proving” to them, via subterfuge, that all men REALLY DO have “superior skillz” in comparison to all women? Would that make the male gamers lash out at female gamers (or at females, in general) less?
Gee, did I just describe an aspect of “adapting” in Western (and perhaps others) culture that has existed for a looooooong period of time, that didn’t really make men view women less misogynistically?
Oh, and it finally did get to the point where I simply didn’t want to play board games with him anymore, because it became an exercise in ultimate boredom for me. He was convinced that I must be having an affair with a coworker or someone because I didn’t want to spend “quality time” playing games with him anymore. Yep, no awareness whatsoever.
@Pam: Wow, that’s horrible. I admit to having acute periods of frustration and anger when I’m losing a game by a wide margin, but I don’t sulk about it for days, I move on.
It sounds like you don’t have to deal with him anymore, and if so, that’s great.
I was just lurking and haven’t posted before, but I’ve got to say that this must o be the most staggering example of obvious hypocrisy on the site this week, and that’s saying something. Someone posting under a male name (it’s not common in my part of the world, but I’m pretty sure “Phil” is a man’s name) telling women that revealing your gender means that you think you’re special because of your gender.
Howe about you Phil? I think everybody here figured out you must be male from your very first post, simply by noticing that you present yourself with a male name and talk about women in a way that indicated that you didn’t consider yourself one of them. That’s how most women are found out too, they post using female names, speak with a female sounding voice, their pictures reveal a female looking face, and/or they talk about something which indirectly clues people in on their gender.
In fact, it took me a lot longer to figure out the genders of most of the regular posters here, and I still haven’t figured out half of them. You’re presenting yourself a lot more gendered, and revealing your gender a lot more clearly, than most of the female posters here. So by revealing your gender, are people here supposed to conclude that you think you’re special because of your gender? Do you expect to not have to adapt? Do you demand that people accommodate your special needs? If not, why are you revealing your gender?
Dragon Age: Origins had three out of seven female companions, four of eight if you got a specific DLC (ignoring Dog).
Dragon Age: Awakening had two out of six female companions (ignoring Mhairi, since she dies like right away).
Dragon Age 2 had three out of six female companions, three of seven if you got a specific DLC (ignoring your sibling, since they can be male or female depending on your choice of class).
Not terrible numbers, but not exactly inspiring. And the Dragon Age series is one of the more progressive.
@Falconer:
Yeah, I didn’t count sequels to specific games because I didn’t want to get into the ton of spin-offs and whatnot. X-2 is a pretty good example of how even when game designers DO use lots of female characters, they fuck it up.
Yeah, I was trying to figure this out and couldn’t make it work, but that link you posted matches eerily. (Off the top of my head: Tifa is sexy, Aeris is responsible, Yuffie is childlike; Rinoa is sexy, Quistis is responsible, Selphie is childlike; Lulu is sexy, Yuna is responsible, Rikku is childlike; Fran is sexy, Ashe is responsible, Penelo is childlike; Fang is sexy, Lightning is responsible, Vanille is childlike.)
The question is whether that’s intentional or just the result of deeply ingrained ideas. Probably a little of both.
@Falconer:
You are correct, I don’t have to deal with him (or my 1st husband) anymore, as I survived both of them (the 1st was result of injuries incurred in automobile accident…. he was the drunk driver in that case, and the 2nd was due to complications arising from physical illness), and yes, as hard-hearted as it may sound, it is great that I don’t have to deal with either of them anymore. The effort of having to always diminish myself in order to appease/uphold their fragile egos in almost every facet of our everyday lives (“gaming” was just one small area where this occurred) was way beyond tiring and tedious. I have been “flying solo” for a little over 20 years now, and loving every minute of it.
I just lost a big long response. So, you guys will be spared further “ignorant” responses from this “asshole”. 🙂
^If it’s any consolation, you’ve just given us all strong evidence that there is a God.
Oh noes, whatever shall we do! Maybe if you didn’t keep repeating the same failed points, you’d cut your comment size in half?
Kinda sucks though, you were keeping us (or, at least, me).. “entertained”. The massive geek that I am, I get excited whenever games or RPGs or whatever comes up because I love talking about them. Trolls are like the bestest excuse to do that ever. Oh well!
It’s ok, we can guess what you were going to say:
Women should stop being all… all… female if they want to participate in things like the rest of us human beings!
Rape and death threats are just part of an enjoyable gaming experience, suck it up and deal!
Get back in the kitchen and get me a sandwitch, bitch, and if it’s a good sandwitch I’ll let you play Wii Bowling and Harvest Moon as those are acceptable games for females.
Letting women play games means that my boner wont be coddled, AND THAT’S OPPRESSING MALE SEXUALITY YOU MISANDRISTS.
Only with more excess words. I think the Internet (as its own entity) didn’t want to put up with another long “No Gurlz Alowd in Jamez Rume (unlez samwhich maykr)” screed.
Okay, just a couple of parting points.
1). You guys are an upstanding example of how people in a “in group” should treat outsiders. So far I’ve been repeatedly called “ignorant”, an “asshole”, and generally talked down to. But I guess since none of you threatened me with rape, it’s not the same. Plus I have male privilege so I basically deserve it.
Maybe I should gather some masculists and we can come over to this site, talk about the way we’re harassed, and force you guys to censor the way you talk to us?
It’s just ironic that in your righteous indignation with me, just for disagreeing with you, a good portion of you treated me the same way you complain female gamers are treated.
2). The problem I have, and I’ll reiterate here, isn’t the “anti-harassment” angle that you guys are taking. It’s the fact that it won’t stop there. Many of you have expressed your desire to suppress female objectification in games. Which is wrong, according to the following subpoints.
a). Objectification is intrinsically tied to human sexuality. When you’re with a member of the opposite sex, and it’s business time (another FotC quote, yes), you will likely objectify the person as part of the sexual experience. This is why lingerie and role playing exist, and also leather man-thongs.
Let’s say you’re married to someone. You might know they occasionally have bad breath, or they clog the toilet every now and again, or they were depressed for a couple of years in college and almost killed themselves. All of that stuff makes them who they are, and knowing those things might make the relationship more intimate, but they fly right out the window when you’re in your business socks, and it’s time for business.
b). To see the absurdity of this, imagine if we wanted to censor female sexual objectification. Of course, no one thinks to do that, because all women are angels (har har), but…
How often do you guys complain about the objectification of a man’s body, or a man’s status in things like romance novels? Or how often do you complain about the objectification of men in, oh, say video games just as a random example of things in which men are objectified.
This isn’t a “what about the menz” complaint either, because I couldn’t give a crap less if women objectify men. If they enjoy it, then good for them. Admittedly, this might be because of my male privilege, though.
In the same way, yeah, a man can be aroused by a woman in skimpy clothes. Men are very visual. And while objectification CAN be a bad thing, it isn’t necessarily so.
So basically what I boils down to is, if you want to stop people from saying mean sh*t to you, great. I’ll help shut up the dbags. If you then want to go further and censor developers and force people to live in fear of expressing themselves in a way that isn’t inappropriate but which you told them was inappropriate because you personally don’t like it, well then I’m not on board anymore.
I’m not just assuming that it’ll get taken too far either. This sort of divide-and-dominate tactic happens wherever you see women come into a space and start playing the “I’m a harassed victim” card. For instance, in the atheist movement, freethoughtblogs started censoring bloggers and shifting the focus away from freethought and skepticism and atheism towards feminism and shutting up anyone who disagrees. Now, I do get a sick sort of enjoyment out of watching the atheist movement implode due to this influence, but I don’t want to watch the same thing happen to video games.
Live in fear! Of the feminist death squads that will for sure show up and shoot you dead on the spot if we in any way try to address sexism in video games. This does not at all make you sound like a paranoid idiot, Phil. Nope, nothing hilarious to mock here!
I’ll go make some popcorn while the rest of you rev up your mockery engines.
Kinda says a lot that you think the whole point of female characters are to sexually arouse people and people who know what a good story looks like thinks the point of female characters are to be unique and varied individuals with their own traits, flaws, strengths, weaknesses and to help drive the plot and be part of the world of the story. Y’know, like male characters.
We don’t object to sexy characters. There are plently of people who are and enjoy being sexy. What we object to are when characters, and this applies overwhelmingly to female characters, are put there as ‘sexy set dressing’ and have minimal impact on plot. Or they do impact on plot, but their main traits are ‘sexy, sexy, sensual, sexy’. Or where female characters behave unrealistically to facilitate sexy – high heels and loose, very revealing draped tops for hand-to-hand combat, idle animations for female characters that involve wiggling and jiggling.
Ok Phil. Here’s the deal. No married couples do not necessarily objectify each other just because they are having sex. To truly objectify, one would have to place their needs as first and behave as though the other is only an object you’re interacting with and they don’t have their own set of complex needs and feelings etc. Do some people do this? Yes, they are called bad lovers.
Point two, we are not married to or in an intimate relationship with Pop Culture.
Point three. Yes, when the principles of objectifying are laid out, that can apply to men, so yeah, go nuts. Nobody is stopping anyone from doing this, but point four…
You strip away the context that women have had limited roles, and still do and objectification for wimminz in popular culture is most of the time the ONLY way they get portrayed. This reinforces the cultural norm that women are less than a whole person, or they are limited people for a limited purpose, ones that strip them of humanity and put them in a subservient role to the DEFAULT gender, male.
Point five, that you don’t get this basic truth and these basic elements demonstrates that you are out of your zone here, and have no idea what you’re talking about or protesting.
and finally point six. Why focus on what people have called you? “Ignorant” OH NO!!!
Well guess what I think you’re a honkey, too.
XD
While Phil is getting butthurt about being insulted, here’s another one to add to the list – Phil, you’re a prude. Seriously, wtf was that shit about how terrible it is that women have casual sex, and do you not see how hilarious it is that you can be that prudish and then turn around and insist that gratuitous T&A is essential to gaming culture?
If you want an environment in which men’s right to objectify women is completely unquestioned, because that’s what the environment is for, that is a thing that exists. It’s called a strip club – go to one, and stop whining about the fact that women are getting their girl cooties all over your video games.
Oh! He came back!
And i’m going to constantly refresh the post so I don’t get ninja’d, hah. 😛
You guys are an upstanding example of how people in a “in group” should treat outsiders.
No, we’re an upstanding example of how people in an “in group” react when someone from elsewhere comes in with a statement that they know will (or don’t know will, but we’ve seen a million times) be inflammatory. Like blaming women for not doing more to stop their own harrassment.
Or how often do you complain about the objectification of men in, oh, say video games just as a random example of things in which men are objectified.
Stereotypes and bad characterisation for men in games do exist (you won’t get any argument from us that bad characterisation exists all round and better writers are needed for a lot of things), but they aren’t objectified nearly as much. Also, the fantasies based around men still target men, eg. power fantasies. And the default for male characters (at least, white, straight etc ones) is still treating them as full 3d characters rather than just focusing on one facet of their being.
On the other hand, women who aren’t based around some stereotype, fantasy (for men!) or bad characterisation are the exception, not the default.
This isn’t a “what about the menz” complaint either, because I couldn’t give a crap less if women objectify men.
Of course you don’t, because the objectification of a man (at least a white, cis, straight etc, because there’s intersectionality issues here) just doesn’t have the same weight as the objectification of a woman; there’s no power behind it.
..objectification..
You.. you need to go learn what objectification is. Like creativewritingstudent says, finding someone attractive =/= objectification. Being attracted to someone doesn’t stop you treating them as a human being. Penises aren’t magic mind control devices.
For instance, in the atheist movement, freethoughtblogs started censoring bloggers and shifting the focus away from freethought and skepticism and atheism towards feminism and shutting up anyone who disagrees. Now, I do get a sick sort of enjoyment out of watching the atheist movement implode due to this influence, but I don’t want to watch the same thing happen to video games.
Oh.. you’re one of those people.
So, in summary, things Phil doesn’t understand are as follows:
1. Objectification
2. Freethoughtblogs
3. Feminism
4. EVERYTHINGARGLEBARGLE
Has anyone ever done an Objectification For Dummies guide? It seems like we need one, what with all the dudes who don’t appear to understand that it doesn’t mean “being attracted to someone”.
So let me get this straight…. When women receive graphic rape and death threats (including from men who make it a point to state that they know where the woman live), that’s no big deal? But when a man/company is told by someone that their portrayal of female characters is bad, that’s the same as forcing them to live in fear of expressing themselves?
So basically “We need to fight the people trying to end harassment of women, because if they get their way, they might end up subjecting men to something which is only a fraction as bad?”. What is it with men being so frail they can’t handle the least bit of criticism without feeling like they’re being denied their fundamental humanity, while women are supposed to be able to just shrug off dozens, or hundreds, of messages telling them they’re fucking cunts and should be raped to death?
thank you AB, well put. (and everyone else too, I really liked ABs though)
This can’t be pointed out enough. I feel like quoting you again, but I’m right under you… I think…
If I really thought you were leaving this would be a bit of a wank in public, but I’m pretty sure you’ll poke your head back in.
1). You guys are an upstanding example of how people in a “in group” should treat outsiders. So far I’ve been repeatedly called “ignorant”, an “asshole”, and generally talked down to. But I guess since none of you threatened me with rape, it’s not the same. Plus I have male privilege so I basically deserve it.
In plainer English…. “Waaaah!, you were mean to me.”
Suck it up and deal. Tone trolling is pathetic. It’s a cheap trick and ultimately pointless. Is there a dynamic here? Of course. Is it friendly to people who say women should be willing to suffer because they are women (which has been a core tenet of your arguments in every subject you have addressed)? No. And it shouldn’t be.
But we have addressed your points. We may not have coddled your little ego and pretended there was some merit to them. We may have called you an idiot; but that’s because we don’t think they have any merit, and we think you are an idiot.
But we did more than that, which is why this is different from the gamers you are defending.
It’s just ironic that in your righteous indignation with me, just for disagreeing with you, a good portion of you treated me the same way you complain female gamers are treated.
No, it’s not, as I said above.
Maybe I should gather some masculists and we can come over to this site, talk about the way we’re harassed, and force you guys to censor the way you talk to us?
Go for it. We could use some more cat’s paws. Because I doubt they will be as well mannered as you have been. It’s not as if it would be the first time a group of men with their egos in their hands came here to try it.
They will get what you got; treatment in good faith until that extension of faith was shown to be lacking (to be honest, some people manage to show that lack of faith in the first comment; they get shorter shrift).
Is this a hostile place to people like you? Yes, because you don’t think women should be treated like people.
2). The problem I have, and I’ll reiterate here, isn’t the “anti-harassment” angle that you guys are taking. It’s the fact that it won’t stop there. Many of you have expressed your desire to suppress female objectification in games. Which is wrong, according to the following subpoints.
No, it’s not. You don’t understand what objectification is. It’s reducing a person to nothing but what they can do for you. It’s seeing them as a thing, not a person. It can be sexual, it can be racial, it can be labor-related.
Seeing someone as, “sexy” isn’t objectification. The difference in how games present male characters (variable, with aspects that don’t relate to sex; in reasonable clothing for the environment; and possessed of complex motives and abilities) is in stark contrast to the ways they present women (scantily clad; on spaceships and on battlefields, ditsy, hesitant, etc.). If they were doing it to everyone that would be one thing, but they don’t, and the differences are foul.
How often do you guys complain about the objectification of a man’s body, or a man’s status in things like romance novels? Or how often do you complain about the objectification of men in, oh, say video games just as a random example of things in which men are objectified.
Showing, still, that you don’t understand objectification. It’s not thinking someone is sexy. It’s thinking sex is all they are good for.
This isn’t a “what about the menz” complaint either, because I couldn’t give a crap less if women objectify men. If they enjoy it, then good for them. Admittedly, this might be because of my male privilege, though.
It is (though I doubt that last sentence was honestly made). You have never been objectified in a sexual way. No, I take that back, you may have been, but you didn’t have it happen often enough to understand; and the odds are if you did it was by someone who repelled you (being objectified tends to make the objectifier a lot less attractive) and you turned them down; without realising that was part of the equation.
Which is a function of being male. It happens to men so rarely they fail to see it for what it is.
For instance, in the atheist movement, freethoughtblogs started censoring bloggers and shifting the focus away from freethought and skepticism and atheism towards feminism and shutting up anyone who disagrees. Now, I do get a sick sort of enjoyment out of watching the atheist movement implode due to this influence, but I don’t want to watch the same thing happen to video games.
Citation needed. Because this is news to me. What I see is a lot of people all complainy ass and offended that Skepchick called them out for being douchecanoes and assholes; and the majority saying, “we’re cool with that.”
So basically what I boils down to is, if you want to stop people from saying mean sh*t to you, great. I’ll help shut up the dbags.
No you won’t. Because shutting them up requires excising the treating of women as nothing more than sexual objects in games.
I’m not just assuming that it’ll get taken too far either. This sort of divide-and-dominate tactic happens wherever you see women come into a space and start playing the “I’m a harassed victim” card.
Which is why you won’t. You’re one of the douchebags.