So Angry Harry, the dotty old British uncle of the Men’s Rights movement, has a post up vaguely warning that the virus software company Symantec just might soon have some sort of shareholders revolt on its hands because it dared to put a bunch of men’s rights sites on a “hate sites” blacklist, blocking access to them for some users of Symantec’s Rulespace software.
That’s kind of an old whine at this point, but what captured my fancy was this recent discussion about Harry’s article in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Oh, where to begin with all this? I’m charmed, of course, by the idea that feminism is just ruining things — ruining things! — for all the nice ladies in the tech world. I mean, it’s not like feminists have anything to complain about with regard to sexism amongst male techies. They’re just complainy complainers. Ladies in tech are doing just fine, thanks! Don’t take their word for it. Take the word of some random dude in the Men’s Rights subreddit for it.
But the real treat here is Hamakua’s nightmare vision of an army of secret “imbedded” Anita Sarkeesians infiltrating major corporations and … doing what, exactly? Secretly making videos about sexist tropes in video games in hidden compartments underneath their desks, like that secret nap compartment George had built under his desk at work on Seinfeld?
Beware the stealth Sarkeesians!
(Found this through the AgainstMensRights subreddit.)
What’s interesting is the generalized fear of many non-MRA dudes in the tech industry. My partner is a game developer and I gravitate around a lot of tech people (and I’m a gamer). We had the obligatory conversation about Sarkeesian. A lot of these guys, even my partner, feel like Sarkeesian is trying to force all or most video games to become feminist. All of these dudes are disgusted by MRAs. I watched all her videos, and I don’t see that at all. In fact, I think she goes out of her way to say, “this is a trend I’m noticing, but it doesn’t mean those games are bad or shouldn’t exist”, etc. But they hear a sort of “men are evil, ban all video games” dog whistle.
What’s up with that?
On a tangent, it’s time to talk about racism in video games too.
Also, support of Sarkeesian is very gendered. It’s interesting to note that a lot of tech men who support her online get comments from the anti-Sarkeesian crowd resembling “I disagree with you because [argument].” When it’s a tech woman supporting her, the comments are… I’ll just translate them into [frothy mouth misogyny].
Men get so bizarrely defensive of “their” media it honestly baffles me.
It’s so odd because the points Anita is making are really obvious in a way, like it’s really simple analysis of them. To try and deny that the tropes she’s identifying don’t exist is quite weird because they are so obviously there .
Oh, guys guys GUYS! I just listened to Cobalt 60:s “wail”, and I realized it’s THE PERFECT MRA theme song (as long as nobody tells them the lyrics were written by a woman of course!). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv7phSz1tdU
I suspect it has something to do with the rhetoric surrounding her, instead of what she’s actually said. It’s also something that they aren’t used to hearing I’m guessing. People tend to think of criticism as a personal attack, especially if they aren’t used to it, and Feminism has been branded for a number of years as bad or evil (the whole “I’m not a feminist but…” thing) and so they hear Feminist, automatically associate it with straw feminist arguments they’ve heard people who talk about feminists say, and go into things hearing that instead of listening to what she’s saying. They probably also hear about her videos second-hand for the most part, instead of as primary viewers. Plus, some good old-fashioned internalized and likely subconscious misogyny is likely working there too.
There’s a very big fear of “men’s things” (ie: misogynist shit) being taken away from them.
We could have a thread on that topic BTW! We could post links to songs that would be good MRA theme songs.
Wait, wait a second:
P1. Feminists are trying to push their ideology into the gaming world.
P2. Women have been appearing more in the gaming industry, and that’s a good thing.
C. Feminism is bad for women, too.
I can’t even begin to understand the reasoning here.
Ally, I think what they’re getting at is that without feminism, there would sort of naturally be more and more women in the gaming industry, which would be good for women. Without feminism, more and more women would enter the gaming industry and do real gaming work. Instead, the gaming industry is infiltrated by feminists who don’t do proper work, but just hide in basements and make misandrist videos and destroy the companies they work for. This hurts those women in the gaming industry who’s there to actually work instead of just conspiring and making misandrist videos.
Oh. Well at least that’s more coherent, although still detached from reality.
The mental image of feminists hiding under their desks and making secret feminist videos is absolutely hilarious to me.Thank you for that, David. 😀
Also, Ally, are you Aaliyah? I know WordPress has been doing a lot of weirdness with names and I recognize the avatar pic, so just curious.
Intriguingly when I had a child filter from T-mobile USA on my phone both Manboobz and Yo is this racist were regularly considered inappropriate (either due to hate speech, mentions of sex and alcohol or language it wasn’t specified).I never had problems accessing The Spearhead of AVFM so the MRA make gains and losses by hate speech rules.
Ha! That clueless discussion… “Oh, man, it’s a shame they’re forcing us to hire so many women now, because I’ve worked with women who are great programmers.”
Dude. Seriously? That’s the actual effect aimed for here. Allowing women who want to and are good at it to do the job.
But, no, it has to be all about “femminist plants” and “equal opportunity quotas.”
Shitlords, indeed.
Absolutely agreed with SittieKitty.
So many argument I’ve seen have been about extending her argument well beyond her stated boundaries. “I’m not making argument X” she says, then the rebuttal goes on a long rant against argument X.
@AK
Yep, that’s me. I changed my nym just recently.
Haha, I’ve actually seen criticism of her about that.
Your posts are getting desperater, Futrelle. Continue your whining, we all see you as you really are.
leftwingfox, well they can’t argue against what she’s actually saying, so they have to find that righteous indignation somewhere, even if it’s just inside their misconceptions.
RE: MaudeLL
I would enjoy a racism in video games work. I feel like I’d learn a lot, and learn about games more worthy of my time! (Er. If I still played games. Which I don’t really–video games is an EXPENSIVE hobby, for me anyway.)
Speaking of sexism in computer games, and following my trend in reccing good shit to combat bad shit, American McGee’s Alice! Two computer games starring a woman, in the horror genre, and she isn’t sexualized at ALL. Not once! There is sexual violence in the second game, but it occurs AROUND her, not TO her.
I never realized how REFRESHING it was to have a female hero in a horror milieu where rape ISN’T part of the horror!
Ooh ooh, can any more astute Manboobzers recommend games that aren’t racist? Old ones are good, I still sometimes chase those down.
Well, let’s not let them know that I have successfully infiltrated the miltary industrial complex and have spent 20 years populating a huge database with my feminist laser data. Because that would be bad for women in the sciences.
@LBT- I have the Alice game! Haven’t played it yet, but your recommendation may tilt the scales. What kind of games do you enjoy?
Oh lord, it’s getting “desperater” round these parts. About time to turn back and become proper
raging misogynistsMen’s Human Rights Activists.Oh, racism in games? I posted this on the forum, but for a good summary of how some asshats feel about that, just read the comments section here: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/20/reinventing-shadow-warrior-for-the-modern-era/
Honestly, though, why is Anita Sarkeesian seen as some antichrist of video games? Like, there is a large audience of gamers that started hating Erik Kain, a Forbes journalist who wrote a lot about video games who decried a lot of things widely hated around the industry such as DRM and Day One DLC, just because he said one thing supporting Sarkeesian. Seriously, first they saw him as the greatest game journalist ever, now they don’t care about him.
No, Screaming Fist, it is you who is the desperaterer.
Anita Sarkeesian can’t win. If she gets all niche academic on their ass, they’ll say it’s just a bunch of worthless jargon. But since she’s making videos that are very accessible where the examples are self-evidently sexist, then she’s just some huckster who had dumb people pay her loads of cash to do easy work.
Nevermind that her documentation is flawless, that she’s played all those games to get direct experience with them, that she gives examples from popular games across the history of videogaming AND also finds niche games with little following, etc etc. And that in my experience being able to reliably demonstrate something that everyone already knows because of “common sense” is really freaking hard (yay for an entire semester on Peano arithmetics in university!).