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.)
*spent a literal work day on the data* not kidding, went into work with my mother and did pretty much nothing besides survey stuff. Which is what I should be doing currently…
Time for more religions. Anyone who checked 50+ is getting a hearty “fuck you”
To be honest, I think the idea that video games are racist as a whole is ridiculous (eurocentric, privileged, yes but that’s a given with everything) – I think developers do a good job of keeping that nonsense out of there. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that was racist. I’ve watched racist movies, read racist books, but never a racist video game. Gamers are all a bunch of racist shitheads and losers, though.
Video games do seem to have huge, huge goddam hateboners for muslims though. I remember once watching a documentary about video games and society, and in it muslims who played video games were wondering what the hell was up with that.
My favorite comment:
The last game I tried to play was Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. The problem I had was less racism / sexism than the inevitability of combat. At least Civilization has a ‘no war’ option. But, as my teenage son tells me, RPGs with no combat are not commercially viable.
Regarding Fist of Fury, I’m hearing his posts in the voice of Internet star Annoying Orange. It seems to help.
That’s all he needed to say.
🙁 No we’re not! Not all of us anyway…. most of us just complain about controls being too hard to figure out.
🙁 Yes they do. I, and an also non-racist non-shithead non-loser gamer friend of mine, are kind of hoping that the games industry will learn how to have conflict in games without the whole otherising thing going on. I thought Deus Ex did a good job of that – the original one – since you learn that your original enemies are fighting for a good cause, and you know that your later enemies believe that they’re fighting for a good cause… so everyone’s sorta good and you generally try not to slaughter everything you see. I’m seriously hoping they can make that sort of thing common.
Illusion magic is very helpful for finding ways around combat. I mean, you still have to hurl spells at enemies, so there’s technically still combat, but it’s not so bad.
I really want to play the game that these guys are talking about…. before they get… y’know… shot.
Wow, unintentional touching on the truth, there! They have everything to lose instead of everything to gain because they are privileged as shit and their goal is to preserve those privileges at the expense of everyone else who stands to gain what should reasonably already be afforded them.
As usual, holy cognitive dissonance, Batman.
Had to log in again, so general disclaimer the girlofthegaps = dustydeste.
Kitty avatars, saving us from identity loss! 😛
Cloudiah:
What is that little bald baby animal in the video? I couldn’t make out what she said.
On the video games I have been playing Guild Wars 2, and haven’t come across anything racist/sexiest yet. The amount of detail you put into creating your character is amazing, I haven’t ever had that many options for customization in a mmorpg before.
I’m still low level though, so I’ll have to play much more before I can say for sure. 🙂
“Infiltrate an industry, create a problem that doesn’t exist, engineer the problem and the solution to said problem in such a way that furthers your own ideological goals.” – from the quote block up top
This sounds suspiciously like a modified MRA strategy.
@WalkingStickBug – that’s a puggle, a baby echidna.
I’ve watched Anita Sarkeesian’s videos and…I don’t see what’s so offensive. She’s analyzing and pointing out fictional tropes – specifically ones that are either implicitly or overtly sexist. Honestly? I like that kind of stuff. It’s interesting to examine the various mechanisms that go with creating a narrative, being someone who likes writing fiction.
She’s not doing anything different from what TvTropes does – except it’s in video form and from a particular perspective. It’d be great to see more of such things but from different angles. I don’t see her critics trying to do such as much as whine about how “wrong” every argument she makes is. All using either personal projecting or utterly obtuse talking points that usually have nothing to do with what she said. One went as far as to play the inane “men are objectified too!” card – not realizing men being strong, noble, and handsome is purely a power fantasy and not sexualization.
That’s the problem with the MRM though, isn’t it? You’re not allowed to point out sexism UNLESS they are included in it (or even to claim to be worse off). They do so with rape and domestic violence unapologetically – ignoring facts to self-victimize all while victim-blaming. Nevermind facts or other forms of recorded observation, as long as they get the validation they seek like meth addicts going through withdraw.
@WalkingStickBug: It’s a baby echidna, or spiny anteater, called a puggle.
@j:
I was just saying to myself, self, what I need to feel like I’ve really had a good day, is someone to judge me. That would be great.
Thank you, j, for judging me over gaming just like you judged me over atheism.
What would I ever do without you?
Isn’t it obvious? She’s a girl – with girlboobs – talking about boythings! Girls – with girlboobs – aren’t allowed to talk about boythings! Boythings are for boys – with boyboobs – and they are sacred!!
Funny thing… didn’t even occur to me to think that I was being judged as a gamer, even though we all (gamers) were, quite explicitly so.
*Pokes j with a stick*
That’s a whole lot of judgmental fucked-up mess. Who the fuck died and deemed you with this omniciant power to judge people you don’t know?
Ah, dammit. I forgot that DRM is a race.
In case anyone is wondering, yes, there are many racist video games.
THIS!!! I just don’t get it at all. And most rebuttals to her videos so far have been nothing but strawmen and misconstruing of her words. I don’t even agree with everything she says and sometimes she sees sexism where I personally don’t, but her overall message is true. I’ve seen people call her a bigot, comparing her to Hitler (or some similar shit like that) and someone who wants to destroy men…I mean really? its so irrational and dramatic…she hates men because she points out a lot of female characters are damsels and that can re-inforce negative views about women that ALREADY exist (caps because a lot of rebuttals seem to hear that she is saying videogames CAUSE sexism, which is not at all what I interpreted her to say and am 99% sure she is not saying) she even said its fine to still enjoy those games. I know I’m not going to stop playing Mario just because I recognize Peach is a damsel.
and yeah, getting really fed up how any conversation online about women now must always include men too before MRAs start swarming. I’m sorry but some problems men and women face are simply NOT equal.
this is the only rebuttal vid that makes a bit of a good point and isn’t filled with snark and crappy arguments. However, just because Peach and Zelda have good qualities and are not completely weas does not erase the fact that they are damsels and still end up getting kidnapped while Mario and Link get to be the protagonists having all the adventure. What do you all think?
*completely weak
One of my friends worked on an MMO with no combat. It folded so fast I’m not sure it even got out of beta. I never got to play it because I had connection issues (it was a european game) and it was gone before I could get it figured out.
Eurocentric and privileged *IS* racist. Implicit rather than explicit, but still racist and marginalizing. That it’s a given with everything just shows how ubiquitous and pervasive racism is.
“But everyone else is doing it”, is not an excuse for anything.
Fisty, you wrote that Anita’s videos are crap. That’s not exactly earth-shattering analysis (yes, I’m sorry, just because you can type some words and post them doesn’t make your comments remotely signifigant, *sniff*) Would you care to explain why they are crap, instead of sounding like a pissy little boy with no points to make?