Our old friend over at the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog is angry again. This time he’s mad at a legitimate target: National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre. But not because LaPierre is the head of an organization that has stood athwart every attempt at sensible gun control, making tragedies like the one in Newtown an all-too-predictable side effect of the easy availability of semiautomatic weaponry.
No, Mr. Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech is made at LaPierre because he thinks the NRA big gun has turned into a feminist. No, really. Noting that in the wake of the Newtown shootings LaPierre launched a transparently opportunistic attack on violent video games, Mr. PMAFT accuses him of doing the work of the grand feminist conspiracy against men and manhood:
The most important reason why LaPierre is wrong is because what he is doing is feminist. Video games are an activity predominately enjoyed by men. So are guns. Both activities are under attack from feminists (just like other predominately male activities like science fiction are) because men are interested in them and women are mostly not interested in them. LaPierre is shooting himself in the foot (pun intended) by alienating allies among the video game community and helping out feminists in their war on male activities.
Never mind that nearly half – 47% — of those playing video games these days are girls and women, according to the Entertainment Software Association. (I await the inevitable comment from a troll telling us all that whatever games these women are playing just don’t count because blah and blah.)
What LaPierre should have done is form an alliance with the video game community. While the Newtown shootings are being used against gun owners right now, the next target will be video games and other mostly male interests and activities. Both the video game community and the gun community are fighting the same enemy, feminism. They should be working together to point out facts like how the Newtown shooter was raised by a single mother and how homes where the father is kicked out lead to more violence.
Never mind that the shooter — like virtually all mass shooters — was a dude; a woman is always to blame.
The NRA is in a position of weakness now because they are attacking video games and not the real causes of the Newtown tragedy, single motherhood and feminism. The NRA is in the same boat as the Republican Party where it needs to become an explicitly anti-feminist and pro-mens rights organization to survive. (Lots of conservative and right wing organizations are in this situation.) Guns aren’t the problem here, but neither are video games. The NRA needs to realize this and realize that its only way forward is by fighting feminism. Anything else leads the NRA to irrelevance.
So one of the most powerful lobbies in American politics needs to team up with a Men’s Rights “movement” that can’t organize a single event that draws a crowd bigger than 8 people, or else it will fade into irrelevance?
I dearly hope the NRA fades into obscurity, and I am hopeful that public opinion about guns is beginning finally to shift in the right direction, but I’m not sure the NRA needs any pointers from MRAs on political relevance.
I was going great blazes in that game until I came right smack up against a GIANT FRAKIN ROBOT. Haven’t touched it since. Damn me and my habit to put a game down rather than play through defeat after defeat!
I got a small but decent sound system for Christmas. Bet XCOM would sound great on it!
““it was Desert Punk.”
Wow, okay. WAAAAAAAY worse than Naruto or Bleach.”
@atomicgrizzly Crap, parent fail : /
“Crap, parent fail :/”
Well, I don’t know if it’s misogynistic, but i remember the show being pretty darn perverted.
Since we’re repeating stats, according to Wikipedia, in 2004 one quarter of all noncasual gamers are women. As I’m certain that number her risen since then, it is so ridiculous to claim women don’t play! 1 in 4 (or possibly now 1 in 3) is a very sizeable minority!
*Were
“1 in 4 (or possibly now 1 in 3) is a very sizeable minority!”
To put it into perspective, the amount of Americans that identify as “black” is about 13% of the population. There are about twice the number of female gamers than there are black people in America!
To clarify: in relation to the represented population (American citizens/gamers)
I like how a dude who may or may not game comes into a forum of lady gamers to say that women don’t game. It’s like….. what?
It’s like me walking into a creative writing workshop at a Starbucks to say “Real writers don’t write in coffee shops!”
@whataboutthemoonz
But think of how edgy you’d be! LOL.
I played Link’s Awakening until the battery memory died and the bolt holding the two halves of the plastic cartridge started to wobble. This was long after the label wore off.
I still have my original Game Boy. It’s a plastic brick, but I’ve still got it. I have to turn it towards the wall when I pull out my DS 🙁
a lot of original game boy games are available in the 3DS eshop.
They don’t? Shit. 😛
@whataboutthemoonz
That’s pretty close to he attitude some take to Nanowrimo. There are elitists everywhere.
I just wish Nanowrimo had a companion month of reading. Since reading has a significant impact on writing, it would make sense and also it would be great to lend some of Nawowrimo’s fame (or infamy for the haters) to reading. There could be book recommendations based on genre flying around, reading some stuff produced in previous Nawowrimos, all sorts of things.
(If there is a month like this, then that just kinda proves that it should be higher profile as I don’t think I am that out-of-touch.)
I’ve never heard of a NaNoReMo, either, and I am both an avid reader of books and of the kinds of internet spaces I would expect to hear such a thing discussed. This may be due to the cultural perception of creation being superior to consumption, though.
“That’s pretty close to he attitude some take to Nanowrimo. There are elitists everywhere.”
I really don’t get the NaNo hate.
Boobzers, I’m looking for an article I’ve read recently that broke down what mass killers have in common as angry straight white dudes who lack the coping mechanisms required to deal with a profound traumatic loss in a healthy way. I can’t seem to find it. Help? 🙁
Was it the Hugo Schwyzer article at Jezebel? http://jezebel.com/5970262/poor-pitiful-dudes-why-you-should-defer-to-men-with-post+patriarchal-depression
Funny story about real writers and coffee shops (and sexism). One of my favorite UF writers is a middle-aged married couple, and the woman had an… interesting conversation in a coffee shop:
http://www.ilona-andrews.com/being-a-writer/pretentious-writer-is-pretentious
The short version is that some young, pretentious writer was giving her the stink eye while she was working and when her husband came to pick her up she says, “I just wrote 800 words. Do you think this one will make the NYT list?”
Her husband goes, “Well, the last eight did.”
@whataboutthemoonz
http://jezebel.com/5969023/have-you-noticed-that-white-dudes-keep-mass-murdering-people
This, maybe?
Those are interesting articles, but neither of them is the one I was looking for 🙁
IIRC it ended along the lines of “what are we doing to fail young men that they don’t have coping mechanisms to deal with tragedy” or something to that effect.
I really need to learn to bookmark shit.
ABNOY? “I now feel somewhat vindicated in my conclusion that much more often than not, human women are drama queens who really believe that they’re the martyr heroine in some soap opera melodrama i.e. the Lifetime Channel syndrome.”
“our threshold for pain is greater than yours.”
Ahhh, are you saying that human women are masochists , is that what you are saying? Mmmm, affirmation hehehe
Quick, we’re losing the logic!! Someone get the paddles, stat!! Live, damn you!!! Live!!!!
@whataboutthemoonz
Maybe this: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/feminist-current/2012/12/what-about-men-masculinity-and-mass-shootings
ahh blockquotes, I knew you’d stab me in the back eventually
as I watch fellow commenters fall prey to blockquote fail, I wonder … will that be me one day? If so, when will I fall?
When?