I’m back from a brief vacation in Migraineland, and thinking about the ways in which Men’s Rights Activists love to appropriate the language of feminism and other progressive movements, usually in ways that are face-palmingly ass-backwards.
Take this recent discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit of the dire threat of “fake gamer girls” invading the “male space” of gaming. The generically named guywithaccount sets up the discussion with this post:
![I want to talk about "fake geek girls" (self.MensRights) submitted 9 days ago by guywithaccount For those of you who don't know about this, there's a bit of a controversy in what I'll call the geek community. Apparently, when women attend geek conventions (that is, those celebrating e.g. video games, comic books, sci-fi and fantasy), some men accuse them of being "fake geeks" or demanding that they prove their "geek cred" by correctly answering trivia questions made up on the spot. Here's one article (of many) that talks about it: [1] http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2013/08/08/the-fake-geek-girl-nonsense/ My concern for this issue is that, like anything else that involves gender, feminists and feminist sympathizers are attempting to dominate the discussion and frame the whole thing from a feminist and gynocentric perspective. The prevailing analysis might be summed up as "geek culture is deeply misogynistic, and the people complaining about fake geeks are just sad little losers who hate women." IMO, the geek subculture has provided a somewhat-safe space for many men who have been snubbed by the rest of society, where they are not expected to prove their value to each other by carving notches in a bedpost or exemplifying traditional masculine traits. The increase in mainstream appeal and female participation over the past decade or so threatens the safety and exclusivity of this space, and the backlash from male geeks is a somewhat-predictable response to the invasion of their space. Of course, there are few spaces just for men, and when someone tries to create or preserve one, they're accused of misogyny. I suspect that some of you don't give a crap about any of this and see the whole thing as petty, but realize that it's not happening in a vacuum. I believe it's merely a symptom of the fact that men have almost no voice in gender discussions and their needs are routinely denied or ignored.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fakegeek.png?resize=573%2C541&ssl=1)
Now, there is a teensy bit of gold in this pile of bullshit: the notion of a “safe space,” where oppressed people can come forward and discuss their issues without fear of being talked over or shut down by those outside their group — who have more power in the world and who may not have their best interests at heart (or who may just be Blabby McBlabbypants types).
But there are a couple of giant problems with this notion when it comes to gamer dudes declaring gaming a “safe space” for men. The first is that, despite lingering resentments over being “snubbed” in high school or wherever — evident in the OP and in comments throughout the discussion — these guys are not actually an oppressed people by any measure that really matters.
Indeed, many of them — as tech dudes in a male-dominated tech world — are in fact in fairly privileged positions. For them to claim they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from the evils of “fake gamer girls” is a bit like Klan members claiming they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from blacks, Jews and Catholics. (Which is more or less what Klan members have argued over the years, albeit in less PC language.) No, I’m not claiming that all MRAs are the equivalent of hood-wearing Klan members. Only some of them are.
The second problem with the “game world as safe space for men” aregument is that YOU CAN’T JUST DECLARE BIG CHUNKS OF THE WORLD TO BELONG TO MEN. Yes, men dominate the gaming world in sheer numbers, both as game-makers and game-players. (While women make up nearly half of all game players — 47% — men tend to dominate the “serious” games that many geek dudes claim are the only ones that really count.) But gaming doesn’t “belong” to men any more than, say, novel-reading “belongs” to women — even though surveys suggest that women make up a staggering 80% of the fiction market in much of the English-speaking world.
Yep, that’s right: Women dominate “noveling” much more dramatically than men dominate gaming. Yet you don’t find women denouncing “fake noveler boys” or declaring that the male brain isn’t wired to understand the subtleties of written fiction.
No, in fact men are actively welcomed into book clubs. And my best friend, a woman, has spent much of the 18 or so years or our friendship trying to get me to read this novel or that novel, though over the years she’s only succeeded in getting me to read maybe one or two of her suggestions, which were pretty good, I have to admit. (I do plan to read some of the others, really.)
If you’re a socially awkward guy and want a safe space to discuss that, find a therapist, find a support group. Don’t pick on women gamers and pretend this is somehow your right because you’re oppressed as a socially awkward guy.
Anyway, here are some other dumb comments from the Reddit thread. YetAnotherCommenter warns feminists that they may lose some powerful allies if they continue acting so feministy.
Speaking of nerds who can’t get laid — which we weren’t but which these guys keep bringing up (and identifying themselves as) again and again — guia7ri seems to harbor some lingering resentments from high school, and who better to take that out on than attractive geeky women?
Hey MRAs, if you wonder why feminists sometimes describe MRAs as bitter men who hate women because they can’t get laid, it’s because MRAs like gui7ri so often EXPLICITLY DECLARE THEMSELVES BITTER MEN WHO HATE WOMEN BECAUSE THEY CAN’T GET LAID.
Meanwhile Byuku blames it all on evil feminists pretending to be geeks in order to make trouble. Because that’s what feminists do.
That’s how they get you!
EDIT: Added a sentence to temper and clarify my assertion that men “dominate” gaming.
Sometimes I wish skience trolls would make more of an effort to tangle with me. I have so many cool facts and anecdotes about Alhazen! Anyway, here is his most famous quote on the development of the scientific method:
“”The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the job of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.”
I’ve also enjoyed the assumption in the original posts that the whole world experiences USA High School, complete with jocks, cheerleaders,etc.
Great quotes, @Elodieunderglass.
“PS have I mentioned I have kittens? Real furry purry black rescue kittens?”
So far, this is only speculation. If you do not post pictures or video of said kittens, then you are being intell-cat-ually dishonest and are not a real cat owned person. Cause SCIENCE. 😉
I have one simple refutation. Slavery. In areas where the institution still exists/existed, it is/was a stable system formed over long periods of time. According to your logic, the enslavement of a group must necessarily be counter-balanced by some positive thing the enslaved group has.
No. The world doesn’t work that way. There is no strict law or force of karmic parity that makes sure every situation is equal. Sometimes people get shit on by others, and sometimes this happens over very long periods of time.
We humans are used to things being equal or balanced because of all the stories we tell ourselves. A woman may have rotten family and be abused for most of her life, but it’s ok because she’ll get her revenge eventually and become a princess, and she has a kind and generous personality in the mean time. Any political debate must always have an equally valid opposing view. Pretending these things are some law of the universe is not only unscientific, but masks actual inequality as “separate but equal.”
@blacksphinx:
That quote… I don’t even. “You aren’t a true rock climber until you have sex with other rock climbers.” “You aren’t a true baker unless your sexual activities involve other bakers.” What the hell does being a nerd have to do with sex? At all? And why does it seem to be a rule that only applies to women?
I’m an old schoold gamer (I used to devour S&T magazine, and try to find someone to play the included game with me. Hexes and tables and dice and little cardboard squares).
These yahoos are fake.
🙂
pecunium — Atari, Adventure. That is all.
There’s a flash version and I forgot about the red dragon! http://www.simmphonic.com/programming/adventure.htm
Alex Reynard: I’m pretty sure it’s only the “bad guys” who dismiss out of hand the pain of people they don’t even know, becase they can’t be bothered to empathize.
You are confusing pain (which I am sure they feel) with oppression. They are different.
Damnit!! It’s only got the easy level! I’ve never beaten 3!
Wow, three pages of the troll declairing a war on “intellectual dishonesty,” then this: ” do. I mean I REALLY do. If I observe a conversation where someone is using dishonest rhetoric, even if I entirely agree with their conclusions, I will stop the conversation and call them on it.”
Oh my gosh, can you imagine him at a party? Holy shit.
Katz
“Soda cans are the gatekeepers of puppies”
That was such a polite puppy! Won’t have any trouble keeping him in a yard! Of course a soda can border may not look very nice in the yard.
Asher said:
“Produce lab experiments.”
You have to be kidding! Our whole society was created by and is maintained by scientists, from the food we eat, to the cars we drive, to the electricity grid that powers our homes and the treatments we use when we are sick. I had cancer recently. I hated the chemo, surgery and the drugs that controlled my pain but I was also grateful they were there. Had they not been I would certainly have died. Are you trying to tell me that’s not valuable? Bullshit!
And yes, scientists devise and run experiments in laboratories but they generally have a purpose in mind. They’re trying to figure out if an idea is or isn’t true or useful. They’re getting their colleagues to try and see if they can pick holes it. They don’t just do them for the sake if doing them *eyeroll*.
My father is elderly now but before he retired he was a nuclear chemist (his big interest was in thorium reactors). We were having coffee the other day and he told me that he was seriously worried about what would happen to society when the people he’d trained retired and there were so few people to replace them. Most people were studying the humanities, philosophy or the “soft” sciences. There weren’t enough hard scientists being trained to take over. Who would solve our ecological problems, deal with greenhouse gasses, come up with the means to produce clean energy? To many brilliant minds were being side tracked by taking “soft options”. Then he shrugged his shoulders and said that he wouldn’t live to see it but he was afraid for his grandchildren.
You use applied science every day of your life and you’ll continue to do so as long as there are scientists to expand and maintain it.
dlz: I agree, we should stop living in the past.
So when are we going to ditch the whole “women have been oppressed for 1000′s of years” trope?
When it stops informing the present. Look at this topic: A class of men is saying women don’t count because… reasons (i.e. they want to do what they want, and not give a shit about any woman who isn’t there to do what the men want).
It’s really that simple. It’s what feminism is all about, and it’s why a lot of men are against it. They want to continue oppressing women (because, as I said, it’s not in the past).
Asher: While I may not be very familiar with geek culture I am fairly certain it doesn’t involve terrorizing targeted groups.
It’s never wise to argue from a position of ignorance. It does involve terrorising target groups. Sorry to take your idyllic paradise away from you.
I’m not defending the Klan. Hell, I’m not even defending the guys who want a male-oriented geek culture; I don’t understand it and have no interest in being a part of it. What I’m pointing out is the stupidity in the original post. It’s blatantly intellectually dishonest, and I hate intellectual dishonesty.
But you seem so good at it.
Take the, “If/then” phrasing you think removes the apologia from that comment.
If there is a large group of gamers who terrorise others (there is) then it gaming, “does involve them”, but you 1: deny it, while 2: claiming to be ignorant.
Someone intellectually honest would say, “I find it hard to believe these claims. I’m not very familiar with geek culture, and the parts of it I’ve see make it hard to credit. Could you show some evidence?”
Then we would show you the evidence you had been to lazy to seek out before accusing us of dishonesty; from your asinine unwillingness to credit the possibility of something which makes some men look bad.
Asher: Well, if you are equating male tech geeks, as a group, with with Klan
More lack of intellectual honesty; esp. as the relevant analogy (not a direct comparison) was 1: qualified, and 2: requoted to you.
You really aren’t very practised at playing this game with smart/experienced people, are you?
Asher: There may, in fact, be some reason that male geeks should not be allowed a woman-free social space but equating them with the Klan is not how to honestly make that argument.
Why not? Defend your proposition; mere assertion that you think it dishonest isn’t enough. Show how the actual comparison made (in the context of the rhetorical devices used) was actually unfair:
Hint, it wasn’t, as it was limited to that subset of geeks who are being assholishly exclusionary, some of whom engage in campaigns of harassement and terrorisation. Further, just as there are actors, and ‘mere’ supporters in the Klan, it doesn’t require that all (or even a significant number) be practitioners of this sort of violence, if the larger community isn’t willing to stand against them.
That was the point of the White Sheets; to make it seem that anyone, and everyone, might be a member of the Klan; Their Eyes Are Always Watching.
The use of anonymous abuse, and fora like Reddit to make it seem that this, ‘is the way of Geek Culture” isn’t completely unparallel to the modus operandi of such kryptomeria as the Klan was designed to be.
Guys, I know why Asher hates puppies: It’s the tail chasing:
I don’t think you understand what “intellectual dishonest” means. It’s not the same thing as a lie, per se. If you’re interested in the concept I would invite you to read Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. In fact this comment of yours is intellectually dishonest in implying that I am arguing just for the sake of arguing.
Nothing in the original post was a flat-out lie.but his equating male geeks with the Klan was intellectually dishonest.
Dude… he didn’t. He compared an argument (a rhetorical device) of the Klan (“We don’t hate blacks, we just think they shouldn’t mix with whites) to a rhetorical device of *some* (you really don’t like to admit that Dave used a limiting comparator: much like the if/then device you used to wiggle out of your Klan Apologia) men, when they say, “we don’t have a problem with Geek Girls, but only if they are REAL GEEK GIRLS, and then setting the bar to pass so high that it can’t be done (moving it, as needed), while taking any dude who says they are a geek at face value.
Intellectual Honesty, you lacks it.
Ok, I have enough Greek under my belt to get it, but cryptomeria is a tree and krytomeria is Russian? Which it really can’t be, oh, it’s the Slavic word for said tree.
I approve of this potential new word, and all new words that make sense, particularly those with Latin or Greek roots.
Asher:
What’s this “women are the gatekeepers of sex” stuff coming from because it seems to me to be an incredibly bleak view of sex. Why is it a bad thing somehow that women can decide who they have sex with? I assume that’s what you mean by “gatekeeping”. Do you not want us to have the right to choose our partner or our wishes irrelevant?
To me sex is about negotiating with your partner as to what you want and both partners having the right to walk away at any time. I know MRAs think that women having sexual agency is a Bad Thing but I’ll never understand why they would want to have sex with someone who didn’t want to (it’s also called rape).
Hey folks, is anyone else seeing the “first year philosophy syndrome” here?
If you mean the “failed first year philosophy, thinks professor failed him because his ideas were too radical, is now on a mission to spread his superior wisdom via the internets” syndrome then sure.
I was thinking ‘showed up the first day of philosophy class ready to instruct the professor how all his Latin is totally wrong, because he read a book on Latin this one time, only it was a Russian/Spanish textbook actually’
Fingers crossed for Beran and Brond:
http://instagram.com/p/dUZIPiF=13/
Or couldn’t be bothered to consult the glossary of his text when attempting to partake in discussions he’s new to on the first day of philosophy class…follows up with accusations of intellectually dishonesty whenever someone tells him he’s wrong or uniformed.